When did the sand bunker rake first come into existence.....

[TEPaul]

......and where?

I realize this one would probably be pretty hard to track and pin down historically and factually, but if it could be it would certainly be interesting to know and try to track forward through the evolution of golf.

Another interesting trivia point would be----what premier golf course in this world was the last to basically forego bunker sand raking?

I'm pretty sure it must be Pine Valley but I'm still not completely clear what Friar's Head does in that vein.

[Anthony Gray]

  We could use a man like Melvyn Merrow now.

  Anthony

[BCrosby]

Interesting question, mostly because I am looking forward to hearing where you are going with this.

I don't know when the rake first came into existence, but I do know that the course I grew up playing didn't have bunker rakes until about 1970. I remember distinctly when they first appeared. I'm embarrassed to admit this now, but for the longest time I thought they were there for bunker grooming by the maintenance crew and not for players. So for a while I continued to fix my bunker messes with my feet until someone pointed out I might use the rake that had been provided.

Bob

  

[TEPaul]

"We could use a man like Melvyn Merrow now."

I'm in touch with Melvyn, Anthony. It seems he might look in here from time to time so hopefully he will see this. If not I'll email him. Niall Carlton should be a good source too.


Bob:

Where I might be going with this is like most of the things I do and say on here-----it's a work in progress. But in the context of the evolution of golf (and architecture and maintenance) it sure should be an interesting thing to pin down somewhat.

I'm betting, however, that even if we can find the first evidence of it in golf there will be no real explanation offered along with it as to why. If I had to guess though, I'd surmise it had primarily to do with your favorite new subject------a constant push towards the idea of ever-increasing EQUITABLENESS in golf (or the constant search for ways to mininmize bad luck in golf).     

[Jeff_Mingay]

Tom,

Are there bunker rakes at Pine Valley now?

Richard Zokol has decided there will be NO bunker rakes at Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club, in British Columbia, when the course debuts this summer.

[Anthony Gray]

   I prefer rakes. No course has enough wind to blow the way needed to insure the group behind you has fair bunkers.

  Anthony

[Alan FitzGerald CGCS MG]

Tom,

Are there bunker rakes at Pine Valley now?

Richard Zokol has decided there will be NO bunker rakes at Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club, in British Columbia, when the course debuts this summer.

they don't have them but the maintenance crew rake the bunkers more than they used to

[TEPaul]

JeffM:

There have never been bunker rakes out on the course at Pine Valley that players can use.

The real difference these days at PV (compared to about ten years ago) is now the maintenance department uses both sand pros and rakes most all the time.

As you know there is just a ton of sand area on that course and apparenlty many golfers have never been able to figure out if they should play some areas of it like some courses do with these so-called "waste bunkers" or "waste areas" for which a definition does not exist in the Rules of Golf and which under local rules is generally played as "Through the Green."

My understaning at PV has always been that no sand area on that course should be played that way---eg allowing a player to ground his club in a sand lie.

But these days compared to around ten years ago those massive areas of sand are most always sand-proed and obviously what they can't get to with a sand-pro is hand raked.

The ultimate point is that ten years ago the lie you could get in the sand at PV in most spots was about ten times more "iffy" than today.

I can sure tell you that playing tournament golf there, that used to definitely get our strategic attention bigtime! For instance, and probably the best example of the difference it how much more intense it made playing #10.

It was the only premier course I knew of like that and it made PV completely unique to me that way.

[David_Tepper]

TEPaul -

I would presume this, and other relevant bunker questions, are answered in "Bunkers, Pits & Other Hazards," written by Forrest Richardson & Mark Fine.

Have you tried to find the answer in your copy of the book?

DT

[Brad Klein]

Actually have been looking into this for quite a while and wrote several articles on rakes, the rules and the history of raking. You'll find, as far as I can tell, the first rake ads in the 1920s for greenkeepers. Maybe the British or Irish are earlier, but I haven't seen it (yet). I have scoured photos of championships and you will find evidence of scruffed up bunkers without obvious raking until the post WWII era, when it looks like rakes were used regularly during play. Even then, you will not see rakes in the photos of courses during play until the mid-late 1950s.  So I would date that as the end of civilization as we know it in the post-Sputnik era, i.e. 1957+.

[Adam Clayman]

I wonder if there was a regional bias (or clue) where the rake concept may have been first introduced?

I'll guess either Chicago or Florida.

Brad, where those ads in national publications? regional?

[Forrest Richardson]

Slifkin invented the sand rake, I'm pretty sure. It was in Madagascar as I recall.

[Brad Klein]

"National Greenkeeper," the magazine of the original GCSAA, the National Association of Greenkeepers of America.

[Peter Pallotta]

...SO I would date the end of civilization as we know it in the post-Sputnik era, i.e. 1957+.

Which is at about the same time that men stopped wearing fedoras and that the clarinet virtually disappeared from jazz. The fedora deemed too ubiquitous for a society bent on expressing individuality, the clarinet deemed too wispy for the more serious and harsher sounds of modern jazz (and the modern world).  And of course, 1957 was also the year that existentialist Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize.
A coincidence?

Yeah...probably... 

Peter

[Joe Hancock]

...SO I would date the end of civilization as we know it in the post-Sputnik era, i.e. 1957+.

Which is at about the same time that men stopped wearing fedoras and that the clarinet virtually disappeared from jazz. The fedora deemed too ubiquitous for a society bent on expressing individuality, the clarinet deemed too wispy for the more serious and harsher sounds of modern jazz (and the modern world).  And of course, 1957 was also the year that existentialist Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize.
A coincidence?

Yeah...probably... 

Peter

You're weird. I like it.

[Peter Pallotta]

I don't try to be, Joe. And before you dismiss the idea out of hand (which, I grant, is the appropriate response), ask yourself this: have you noticed that both the fedora and the clarinet have been making big come-backs lately?  Yes, in a kind of minor, self-conscious way for the most part, a nod back to another era. But the other night I heard a young woman --  Anat Cohen -- play a beautiful jazz-infused clarinet solo over an old Sam Cooke song, and it was brand new and old at the same time.  Which is to say, the new/old trends in gca take a while to come to full maturity. And with that, I hope I've saved myself from complete irrelevancy 

Peter

[Forrest Richardson]

The photo of Brad K. in a fedora, smoking a cigar, was among the best covers of the old USGA Golf Journal I can recall.

[Joe Hancock]

I don't try to be, Joe. And before you dismiss the idea out of hand (which, I grant, is the appropriate response), ask yourself this: have you noticed that both the fedora and the clarinet have been making big come-backs lately?  Yes, in a kind of minor, self-conscious way for the most part, a nod back to another era. But the other night I heard a young woman --  Anat Cohen -- play a beautiful jazz-infused clarinet solo over an old Sam Cooke song, and it was brand new and old at the same time.  Which is to say, the new/old trends in gca take a while to come to full maturity. And with that, I hope I've saved myself from complete irrelevancy 

Peter

Peter,

Here's my new description of you:

Sometimes weird, never irrelevant. Like a Jazzy clarinet.

Joe

[Brad Klein]

Forrest, Peter,

how did you know I also played the clarinet? Made it to first chair, Carnegie Hall, June 1970 -- even if it was a high school graduation.

[Peter Pallotta]

Brad - that's very strange. I too play clarinet and wear a fedora and smoke the occasional cigar (when I'm not chain smoking cigarettes). Which means that if I was smarter, more talented and actually understood golf course architecture, I could have been you!

Hmm. At some point, I must've taken the road MORE travelled....

Peter 

[Forrest Richardson]

... But, tell that to kids today and they don't believe you ... back when we were in school we played clarinet, we wore a fedora, smoked the occasional cigar .... AND ... we raked bunkers with our teeth ...

[Brad Klein]

Back when we were kids, or teens, anyway . .

-it wasn't quite a cigar that we smoked
-we dialed our phone calls
-picked the range with a red shag bag
-judged all of our distances off the 150-marker
-biked to the golf course, where we locked it up and spent the day looping
-feared the caddie master
-lived to play there on Mondays
-used an iron club to block the pressure valves on irrigation heads ("pffft, pffft") while we
  played our approach shots
-bought LPs for $3.99
-went to rock concerts and baseball games for $5
-and waited until the morning newspaper or 7 a.m. sports radio report for scores

[TEPaul]

Brad:

As far as bunker rakes being around pre-1957, they must have been to some extent because Macdonald talked about banning them at The Links Club and Macdonald died in 1939. Tillinghast also talked about running elephants through bunkers on tournament day and Tillie died in the 1940s.

JoeH and PeterP:

You want weird? Forget about the world changing (including the onset of the bunker rake) with the death of the fedora or the clarinet? Forget about things like that-----I think the bunker rake came into mind and existence (and sand in bunkers began to be regularly raked) when the USA made the fatal mistake of giving women the vote (and some form of equality!).

I think Carrie Nation and her hyper moral high school teacher Mrs. Grundy may've invented the bunker rake in golf as well as the forward or "Woman's Tee". They were also responsible for this ridiculous notion of extreme speed of play and the virtual necessity to go home immediately after the round instead of hanging around at the club bar with the Boys and getting drunk.

[jeffwarne]

At a well known GCA fave course where there are no rakes,
members are given training in proper ways to "kick in" their footprints and are given stern lectures or worse if not strictly adhered to.

If such precise raking is required, why not give them the proper tool to do so such as - a RAKE?
or just leave the footprints be.

certainly a caddies dream

[Steve Lang]

  is there a corrolary question here.. when were the first carts provided with a dedicated rakes?  My first experience was in FL