The Arble Ideal Bunkerless Golf Course

[Bryan Izatt]

...........

I'd bet that of the 25 or 30 thousand courses worldwide, or the 18 or so thousand in the US today, probably somewhere around 20% of them have no bunkers.

..............

No bets, but that seems like a bold statement - that there are upwards of 5,000 bunkerless courses in the US.  Maybe you could identify a few in your neighborhood for us - say the 12 you played growing up.

[Bryan Izatt]

Steve,

How so?  I did the flyover videos of Four Mile Ranch and see bunkers on at least three or four of the holes on the front nine.

One other bunkerless course comes to mind - Raptor Bay in Estero, FL by Raymond Flloyd.  It is bunkerless although there are lots of cockleshell waste areas around the edges of the holes.

[Bryan Izatt]

.........

However, and somewhat despite what Behr said above (in fairness to Behr we must recognize WHEN he wrote that) it is apparently true that when golf and architecture first emigrated out of Scotland to inland sites sand bunkering was generally not used. Therefore, we should probably ask ourselves both WHEN it first came to be used prevalently on almost every single golf course in the world, and, in my opinion at least, WHY it came to be used on almost every golf course in the world!

Good questions.  Do you have any answers you'd like to propose.  Seems to me that bunkers are a basic part of the course designer's palette. Have they not always been so, since the beginning of formal course design.  Even in the Golden Age, did they not build the courses and then add the bunkers as they saw how the course played?

[Bryan Izatt]

And, since no one seems interested in where the original aerial is from or who designed it, I will reveal that it is the Port Moresby Golf Club in Papua New Guinea.  Now, as to the architect/designer I'll have to admit defeat on that one.    I can't find any info on the designer.  However, I have great faith that someone on here knows who it is.

[Garland Bayley]

Doesn't four mile ranch have natural waste areas that might be seen as bunkers from a flyover?

No answer as to whether the first course was by Diddel?

[Sean_A]

...........

I'd bet that of the 25 or 30 thousand courses worldwide, or the 18 or so thousand in the US today, probably somewhere around 20% of them have no bunkers.

..............

No bets, but that seems like a bold statement - that there are upwards of 5,000 bunkerless courses in the US.  Maybe you could identify a few in your neighborhood for us - say the 12 you played growing up.

Bryan

I too think this is a very bold claim.  I can think of 4 courses of say 300 that are bunkerless.  I would be amazed if 10% of the world's courses were bunkerless.

Ciao 

[Garland Bayley]

Bryan,

I see our posts crossed when I asked about Diddel.

Any info on who did the clubhouse? Was he someone retired from the Lockheed Skunk Works?

[TEPaul]

"Do you have any answers you'd like to propose.  Seems to me that bunkers are a basic part of the course designer's palette. Have they not always been so, since the beginning of formal course design.  Even in the Golden Age, did they not build the courses and then add the bunkers as they saw how the course played?"

Bryan:

Yes I certainly do while always recognizing it may not be technically provable.

First of all, I believe by the time the so-called "Golden Age" rolled around (even going all the way back to around the turn of the century) I believe sand bunkering was generally very standard in golf architecture.

What I'm really talking about is some of those very early American courses (1890s) and particularly some of the INLAND GB courses when golf and architecture first began to emigrate out of Scotland (as early as the 1850s and 1860 and for the next couple of decades).

During that time (latter half of the 19th century) the production of those rudimentary INLAND courses actually began to exceed the number of courses in Scotland itself.

My own feeling is that there simply eventually came a time where some of the architects of that early time looked back on the accumulation of that type of rudimentary INLAND type course that was sometimes referred to as "Dark Age" or "Steeplechase" architecture and generally had no sand bunkering of the type we consider bunkering (or Scotland did) and then just said to themselves at that point; "We can definitely do better in the future than all that accumulation of CRAP!").

This is really no different than Macdonald's famous remark in the first decade of the 20th century in America when he looked at on the landscape of what we had over here and said; "It makes the very soul of golf shriek."

I just think at that point when they finally decided they could not only do better but that it was also going to cost a lot more than they had been spending to create those early 19th century courses, essentially the way they went about it was to begin to cast their eyes and minds back towards the originally natural linksland and their natural features including natural sand bunkering (which were never really made by man in the first place) and they said to themselves; "We are going to have to actually begin to make those types of features INLAND that were given to the linksland by Nature."

I think THAT was when the type of sand bunkering most of golf came to expect (and not those things that looked like transitioned "steeplechase" jumps) really began to be a total staple in golf course architecture and I think some of the general things that the Scots said back then not just embarrassed those INLAND architects but motivated them to do better in the future by replicating natural looking linksland sand bunkers. Things most of the Scot linksmen said like that prevalent old linksland saw or knock on INLAND architecture such as "Nae Links, Nae Golf."

I'm sure I don't have to remind you that to the Scots back then "links" golf was almost completely synonymous with "seaside" golf with its naturally occuring sand soil and natural sand type so-called bunkering.

I have always felt, Bryan, that hardly anyone today really appreciates the vast differences to those people back then between seaside (links) golf and architecture and the incipient INLAND golf and architecture of that time. To most of us today it's just all become GOLF and GOLF ARCHITECTURE but to some of them back then (the latter half of the 19th century) the differences between the two was about as different as night is to day!

My point is both why and how they finally decided to do something about trying to bring the two closer together within architecture. I believe the entire history of sand bunkering in architecture is intimately wrapped up in this evolution of linksland vs INLAND and eventually linksland features to inland features, and I think it's the reason sand bunkering became almost a total staple in golf architecture everywhere.

Or perhaps looked at in the converse----eg if for some odd reason early linksland (seaside) golf had never had the natural sand bunkering it did (even pre-man made architecture) I doubt golf would either today anywhere in the world.

[Garland Bayley]

For an example of an effort to let the terrain provide much of the interest, and to limit the number of bunkers, see the thread "Bighorn Cliffs Golf Course (Armchair Contest).

Sorry for the self promotion, but it is relevant to this thread.

[Bryan Izatt]

Garland,

No further insight into the architect.  The stealth bomber building turns out not to be the clubhouse, but rather the parliament buildings of Papua New Guinea (courtesy of Panoramio).

[Tom_Doak]

They have a golf course right out back of Parliament?  What a great idea!  Is there any other government in the world similarly forward-thinking?

As for bunkerless courses, I've seen three or four out of the 1200 courses I've seen, so I suspect 10% is a high guess.  Perhaps 5%.

As for the value of bunkerless courses, I just don't see it, any more than I could ever understand why Weiskopf and Morrish always put a single bunkerless hole on their courses.  Why just one?  Why not just try to limit your bunker use to places where it would REALLY matter and eliminate a lot of the clutter?

The completely bunkerless course could be great, but mostly they're about as exciting and as influential as Abstinence Education or the Temperance Movement ... both of which I believe Tom Paul was "against". 

[Sean_A]

The completely bunkerless course could be great, but mostly they're about as exciting and as influential as Abstinence Education or the Temperance Movement ... both of which I believe Tom Paul was "against". 

Tom

I think the point is that at least some archies over-use bunkers some of the time (I am being VERY generous here), to the point of making courses, how did you put it - about as exciting and influential as Abstinence Education or the Temperance Movement.  Then they try to come up with all sorts of MacBehrian cock n' bull about why the bunkers add value.  The salary cap did wonders for the NHL.  Perhaps a sand cap could do the same for archies - tee hee. 

Ciao

[Tom_Doak]

Sean:

If you want to extend my metaphor, it's entirely possible that golf course architecture would change for the better if there were some equivalent of AIDS for those who built too many bunkers, to make us all a bit more circumspect.  It's been "Free Love" for bunkers for quite a while now.

But, you must stay away from the term "sand cap" which some architects employ to justify spending $2 million on soils modification for fairways and roughs ... a dagger through the heart of affordable golf architecture.

[TEPaul]

"but mostly they're about as exciting and as influential as Abstinence Education or the Temperance Movement ... both of which I believe Tom Paul was "against".   "


I could get into some bunkerless courses or at least bunkerless holes if there was some really good "gavity golf" to them or something as exciting as that but the Temperance Movement and Abstinence Education was, in my opinion, probably the most negative and nefarious thing to ever happen to human-kind.

[Sean_A]

Sean:

If you want to extend my metaphor, it's entirely possible that golf course architecture would change for the better if there were some equivalent of AIDS for those who built too many bunkers, to make us all a bit more circumspect.  It's been "Free Love" for bunkers for quite a while now.

Tom

I probably come across as harsh about archies, but in a way I feel sorry for the poor bastards.  They are working against a stacked deck with the distance issue which plays directly into the hands of the hazard issue.  Archies know nearly all golfers love bunkers and so there is pressure to deliver the darn things in spades to please all level of players.  So to stand out from the other clowns,  archies try to be as artful and creative as they can be with what is afterall a sand pit.  Next thing you know archies are creating multitudes of maintenance nightmares when much of the time all that is really needed is a innocent looking feature which can act very much like a bunker only an option of ways to play the shot become available.  Then you get flat bellies belly aching about a lack of challenge (what they really mean is slash masters can bobble the ball about to the same effect as their well executed float and spinner) when most can't even shoot par but a few times a year anyway.  The entire deal is daft.  Then to top it off, if an archie wants to use a bunker as hazard AND to conceal best lines of play he gets a bollocking for creating blind shots rather than getting kudos for creating interesting choices.  

Ciao

[Brendan Dolan]

I got to play Mullen Golf Club this summer, which is a bunkerless 9 hole course.  It isn’t of quite the same architectural standard of its famous neighbor, which is about a 15 minute drive south, but it is a fun little course with some decent topography.  I think the coolest part of the whole place was that a local retired man, who goes by “Jenks”, volunteers his time as the golf course superintendent.  In fact I think I might have heard that they don’t have any paid employees. 

Brendan       

[Mark_Fine]

I have an idea to go along with the bunkerless course, maybe we should start building greens no larger than 500 ft2 as that would really reduce maintenance costs and not make putting such an important and unnatural part of the game as it is today.  Heck when the game was first conceived, the golfer just stuck his hand in the hole, pulled out some sand to make a tee, and played on to the next hole.  These days we build 10,000 square feet of perfectly maintained artifical looking surfaces that costs tens of thousands of dollars to maintain and which go totally against the orignal spirt of the game.  As I have always said, everything in moderation, but aren't sand bunkers much more a part of the game's original intent than greens?  Golf was originally designed as an obstacle course and sand filled hazards were a large part of it.  The putting surface was an afterthought!

[Garland Bayley]

I got to play Mullen Golf Club this summer, which is a bunkerless 9 hole course.  It isn’t of quite the same architectural standard of its famous neighbor, which is about a 15 minute drive south, but it is a fun little course with some decent topography.  I think the coolest part of the whole place was that a local retired man, who goes by “Jenks”, volunteers his time as the golf course superintendent.  In fact I think I might have heard that they don’t have any paid employees. 

Brendan       

Congratulations Brendan,

You found one of the many-many bunkerless courses that the typical member of this website would not even attempt to discover. Tom D thinks there aren't that many bunkerless courses, because no one is going to go out on a limb and say why don't you play Mullen GC, it is a really neat routing on great terrain, and oh by the way it has no bunkers even though it is in the Sand Hills.

[TEPaul]

On other threads on bunkerless courses in the past I've mentioned the interesting little 12 hole Tarrantine GC on Islesboro Island in Maine. I think it is an Alex Findlay, but I've never been sure.

It's got some great topography throughout and plenty of rocky and craggy features which are fairly common on the coast of Maine.

It doesn't have any bunkers but it has always amused me that you can still see where the only one it had once was (on the 2nd hole).

For some reason they removed it years ago! 

[Niall C]

"Do you have any answers you'd like to propose.  Seems to me that bunkers are a basic part of the course designer's palette. Have they not always been so, since the beginning of formal course design.  Even in the Golden Age, did they not build the courses and then add the bunkers as they saw how the course played?"

Bryan:

Yes I certainly do while always recognizing it may not be technically provable.

First of all, I believe by the time the so-called "Golden Age" rolled around (even going all the way back to around the turn of the century) I believe sand bunkering was generally very standard in golf architecture.

What I'm really talking about is some of those very early American courses (1890s) and particularly some of the INLAND GB courses when golf and architecture first began to emigrate out of Scotland (as early as the 1850s and 1860 and for the next couple of decades).

During that time (latter half of the 19th century) the production of those rudimentary INLAND courses actually began to exceed the number of courses in Scotland itself.

My own feeling is that there simply eventually came a time where some of the architects of that early time looked back on the accumulation of that type of rudimentary INLAND type course that was sometimes referred to as "Dark Age" or "Steeplechase" architecture and generally had no sand bunkering of the type we consider bunkering (or Scotland did) and then just said to themselves at that point; "We can definitely do better in the future than all that accumulation of CRAP!").

This is really no different than Macdonald's famous remark in the first decade of the 20th century in America when he looked at on the landscape of what we had over here and said; "It makes the very soul of golf shriek."

I just think at that point when they finally decided they could not only do better but that it was also going to cost a lot more than they had been spending to create those early 19th century courses, essentially the way they went about it was to begin to cast their eyes and minds back towards the originally natural linksland and their natural features including natural sand bunkering (which were never really made by man in the first place) and they said to themselves; "We are going to have to actually begin to make those types of features INLAND that were given to the linksland by Nature."

I think THAT was when the type of sand bunkering most of golf came to expect (and not those things that looked like transitioned "steeplechase" jumps) really began to be a total staple in golf course architecture and I think some of the general things that the Scots said back then not just embarrassed those INLAND architects but motivated them to do better in the future by replicating natural looking linksland sand bunkers. Things most of the Scot linksmen said like that prevalent old linksland saw or knock on INLAND architecture such as "Nae Links, Nae Golf."

I'm sure I don't have to remind you that to the Scots back then "links" golf was almost completely synonymous with "seaside" golf with its naturally occuring sand soil and natural sand type so-called bunkering.

I have always felt, Bryan, that hardly anyone today really appreciates the vast differences to those people back then between seaside (links) golf and architecture and the incipient INLAND golf and architecture of that time. To most of us today it's just all become GOLF and GOLF ARCHITECTURE but to some of them back then (the latter half of the 19th century) the differences between the two was about as different as night is to day!

My point is both why and how they finally decided to do something about trying to bring the two closer together within architecture. I believe the entire history of sand bunkering in architecture is intimately wrapped up in this evolution of linksland vs INLAND and eventually linksland features to inland features, and I think it's the reason sand bunkering became almost a total staple in golf architecture everywhere.

Or perhaps looked at in the converse----eg if for some odd reason early linksland (seaside) golf had never had the natural sand bunkering it did (even pre-man made architecture) I doubt golf would either today anywhere in the world.

Tom,

I've been lately digging about in the archives of some Scottish newspapers for the period of the 1890's and have managed to uncover some course layouts from this period.

Most of the layouts are for inland courses and are for 9 holes only. Bearing in mind Scotland was experiencing its own golf boom at that time (excluding of course the golfing heartlands such as St Andrews and East Lothian where golf had obviously long been established) there was a huge increase in the amount of golf courses. BTW, there was a lot of newspaper comment on whether golf was here to stay or whether it was merely a passing fad !

A lot of these early courses were laid out (the term they used) by leading professionals of the day, notably Old Tom, Willie Fernie, Willie Campbell and Willie Park Jnr, the later two being responsible for laying out a number of courses in the US round about the same time.

What is noteable about most of these layouts is that they simply made use of what was there, eg. fences, hedges, walls, roads etc to give  the "steeplechase" effect that you referred to. I've seen one Old Tom 9 hole layout where he used all of the above plus a railtrack and spoil heap from the local brickworks by way of providing interest to the hole. In a lot of the newspaper reports these hazards are sometimes referred to as "bunkers" which makes it hard to determine at other times whether the reports are specifically referring to sand bunkers or some other form of hazard.

As for when it became standard to put in sand bunkers, its hard to tell. In some instances the intention was to put the bunkers in afterwards, for instance Helensburgh arranged a match with Ben Sayers and a group of other professionals some 4 years after it was first laid out with the intention of getting advice from the pro's on the placement of "bunkers", presumably of the sandy type.

As you say, the early bunkers on links were simply sandy wastes. Trying to recreate this on inland courses in Scotland would have been difficult at the time. Digging a hole and filling it with sand wouldn't have been an option as the hole would have rapidly filled up with water. Building the ground up for the bunker didn't appear to have been thought of from what I have read so far although I could be wrong. The club history for Killermont does include and excerpt from Tatler magazine for 1908 on the bunkers being built at Killermont which suggests that they were cutting edge in the way they were built from ground up.

If I ever master the technology I will post some of the course plans and also the Tatler article for you to see.

Niall

ps you'll be glad to know that golf did indeed catch on in Scotland and is alive and well

[TEPaul]

Niall:

You're the Best. I just can't thank you enough for that post. You're the BEST!

In a short time I will have some more questions about your post and perhaps some other ideas about ways of looking at this clearly extremely important truly incipient age in man-made golf course architecture abroad!


And I'd like to give a lot of credit to Bryan Izatt for just asking the question at the top of that last post!

[Neil_Crafter]

The 9 hole par 3 we recently designed for Barwon Heads GC in Victoria, Australia is bunkerless. While I think this works fine in that scenario, I think having an 18 hole full size course without any bunkers just might be a little too much. Our rationale was along the lines of :
- cheaper construction
- cheaper maintenance
- speed of play given a lot of beginners using the course
- and also a challenge to see what could be done with contour hazards.

While visually it would have been nice to see a few bunkers here and there, the course still looks good and plays fine without any. Here's a couple of pix.

[Cory Brown]

Neil,

Would the course look any better with a few bunkers?  Maybe.  But it looks pretty fantastic as it is.

[Neil_Crafter]

Thanks Cory
It is subjective. We have all gotten used to seeing our golf courses with sand bunkers, that other forms of hazard seem somehow lesser. Its not necessarily the case. It was an interesting exercise nevertheless and the golfers don't seem to miss them!
Neil

[Mark Pearce]

Berkhampsted is a realy good golf course.  Kington is a wonderful place and a sheer pleasure to play.  Both are bunkerless.  Neither would be improved by sand.