Where are they ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Where are the fairway bunkers at Ridgewood ?

There's about ten (10) holes with no fairway bunkers.

Was that an AWT trademark ?

What other courses have an absence of fairway bunkers ?

Preakness Hills, originally, had only one hole with fairway bunkering.
Interestingly, that hole has had the bunker removed, while others have had them added.
Still, six (6) holes remain without fairway bunkering.

Originally, one of the par 3's was void of bunkers

What other courses, other than ANGC, have at least six (6) par 4's and par 5's without fairway bunkering ?

What designers seemed to use them sparingly ?

[RJ_Daley]

I've only played one course that is completely bunkerless.  It is Spring Valley, just west of Kenosha WI.  It is a very good test of golf designed by Langford and Morreau.  I would highly recommend it as a worth while study of how good a course can play without a single bunker.  The ground features are mounds and grass depressions that would be the typical style and shapes of the L&M gull wing diagonal oriented bunkers with sand found on their other courses.  The one aspect of the course that I think could probably add to the fun on this course would be to maintain it more firm.  I suspect they keep it relatively soft as a public course with lots of round played by casual golfers not into such things as firm conditions.

[Patrick_Mucci]

RJ

Do you think that the grass depressions were intended to be bunkers ?

[RJ_Daley]

Yes, probably several of them.  Yet, I do think L&M intended to have sandless grass bunkers with backing diagonal mounds on this and other courses they designed, sparingly.  It just works out that the manner the ownership have approached this issue, as a public course and a specific decision not to have sand bunkers, works in this case.  Dan Moore has studied the historical aspects of this, and Phil McDade has followed Dan's lead here.  So maybe one of them will weigh in with better facts than I can offer.  I would just say it is a fun round of golf on a unique golf course. 

[TEPaul]

Patrick:

If you’re going to continue to try to act like some kind of expert on the history of golf course architecture you’ll need to do some of your own research instead of just asking everyone else endless questions and then arguing endlessly with their answers!

Some of us do that research but you've always been oblivious to it and to doing it.  The bunkers of those ten holes with no fairway bunkers at Ridgewood are actually on some old Tillinghast drawings that are in the third drawer of an old antique American highboy from Baltimore that once belonged to AWT. I have tracked its provenance and today it sits in the attic of the Long Island mansion of Tamara Mellon who started and owns the incredible high-end women’s shoe company known as Jimmy Choo Shoes.

If you want to see those fairway AWT bunkers on those ten Ridgewood holes I suggest you call Tamara Mellon and ask her if you can come over and look in the third drawer of her antique Baltimore highboy that resides in her attic at this time.

You’re a putz, Patrick. You may be able to fool some of the people on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com all the time or all the people some of the time but you will never fool me. If it had not been for my invaluable counsel and mentoring over the last dozen or so years I doubt you’d even be able to find your way to the first tee of most significant American golf courses.

[Mark Saltzman]

Patrick,

Perry Maxwell is noted as using very few fairway bunkers.

For example, at Twin Hills, holes 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17 and 18 (none of these are par-3s) do not have fairway bunkers.  He preferred to use fairway tilt, angles and internal green contouring to create interest.

[Mike Policano]

Tom,

Welcome back!  It is my understanding that AWT's Ridgewood drawings contained some fairway bunkers that were not built. And some of those not built were very cool.  The course opened in 1929. The Club held the 1935 Ryder Cup and there are excellent pictures of the course from those years. When your neighbor, Gil, prepared his first Master Plan for the course in 2000, he studied the pictures. The Club restored all but one short fairway bunker that existed in pictures from 1929 to 1935.

I would love to get a look of Ms. Mellon's AWT drawings or for the Club's historian, another of your neighbors, Andy Mutch and Gil to have access to them. I will contact you shortly.

In the meantime, I can see Pat's smile at your playful barbs.

Cheers, Mike

[Kris Shreiner]

Tom Paul,

NEWBIE

That has to be the funniest thing I've seen on this website since I started! 

Cheers,
Kris

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

I'm glad to see that you finally escaped from HappyDale Farms.

Ran and I were trying to raise the ransom money, vis a vis contributions from GCA.com participants, but to date we were only able to collect $ 17.45, and that came from Moriarty and MacWood.

As to the questions I pose, perhaps you should seek the wise counsel of Sir Robert Huntley, who fully understands my modus operandi.

Interestingly, or co-incidentally, I had dinner with Tamara the other night at Rao's.
She explained that those AWT drawings were a forgery, created by the local sand quarry in Paramus, in the hopes of selling tons of sand to Ridgewood.  She said that only an idiot, or an idiot-savant would have believed that those drawings were authentic as the date on the compass, is 1941, not 1901 and is the Ho Ho Kus course, the predecessor course, not the AWT course at the new location in Paramus.  She said to tell you, Ho ho Ho,      Ho Ho Kus, not Ridgewood

A lot has changed since you disappeared

Since your

[Bill McKinley]

Patrick,

Canterbury Golf Club, designed by Herbert Strong, is an example of this.  Holes 1, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16.  Are all 4s and 5s without fairway bunkers.  1 and 14 are two of the most difficult par 4s on the course in relation to par.  And 14 is tipped out at 370 yards.  Also, #6 did not have any originally, but Geoff Cornish added a couple on the right hand side in the 80's I believe.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Patrick,

From a GB&I perspective, I think Tom Simpson was one who really used fairway bunkers quite sparingly but there are plenty of examples on links courses where bunkering in general is used rarely (Machrie with 6, Carne with 18 being two examples)... Hackett was a more modern example of preferring the use of grass hollows to sand and it was notable when Donald Steel built the 6 new holes at Enniscrone that all were bunkerless.

I'll try and think of examples that have a liberal use of greenside bunkers with very few fairway bunkers. I can't off the top of my head but I'm sure they exist.

[Phil McDade]

RJ

Do you think that the grass depressions were intended to be bunkers ?

Patrick:

Much of the mounding at Spring Valley was intended as bunkering ala the Langford/Moreau Lawsonia course (which also has several mounds that come into play that were intended as bunkers). I hope to post a definitive thread on Spring Valley sometime this summer; I've been going to the course regularly for the past several years (as have other GCA posters), and it's a good example of solid architecture that doesn't necessarily need bunkers to still be a test. Having said that, I don't think there's any question the course was intended to have bunkers -- I've seen thanks to Dan Moore the original drawings for the course put together by Langford, and the course was originally designed to have bunkers. It's about as low-key a course you'll find; high summer rates are still under $25 for all-day weekend play, and conditioning reflects it. Still, it's a wonderful little course with some very good routing, greens, and strategic play.

RJ:

I seem to recall that on the Langoford Wisconsin tour a few years back, several of the participants noted that SV played much firmer and faster than Lawsonia. I've usually found it to be pretty fast and firm -- I've never thought that course suffered from over-watering the way others do. But I also recall you subsuquently went to Lawsonia not long ago to find ideal F/F conditions, perhaps a result of an unusually dry spring.

[Tom_Doak]

Fairway bunkers are so overrated ... and so many architectural experts seem to think if there is not a fairway bunker to avoid that there is "no strategy".

Mark Saltzman:  I had never thought about Perry Maxwell being especially tight with fairway bunker use, but I believe that's 100% right.  It might also explain the relative paucity of fairway bunkers at Crystal Downs -- particularly on the back nine after MacKenzie left!  There are no fairway bunkers on #7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17 or 18 at the Downs, but those holes have plenty of interest.

[Jeff_Mingay]

Fairway bunkers are so overrated ... and so many architectural experts seem to think if there is not a fairway bunker to avoid that there is "no strategy".

Like.

[Tim Martin]

Patrick:

If you’re going to continue to try to act like some kind of expert on the history of golf course architecture you’ll need to do some of your own research instead of just asking everyone else endless questions and then arguing endlessly with their answers!

Some of us do that research but you've always been oblivious to it and to doing it.  The bunkers of those ten holes with no fairway bunkers at Ridgewood are actually on some old Tillinghast drawings that are in the third drawer of an old antique American highboy from Baltimore that once belonged to AWT. I have tracked its provenance and today it sits in the attic of the Long Island mansion of Tamara Mellon who started and owns the incredible high-end women’s shoe company known as Jimmy Choo Shoes.

If you want to see those fairway AWT bunkers on those ten Ridgewood holes I suggest you call Tamara Mellon and ask her if you can come over and look in the third drawer of her antique Baltimore highboy that resides in her attic at this time.

You’re a putz, Patrick. You may be able to fool some of the people on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com all the time or all the people some of the time but you will never fool me. If it had not been for my invaluable counsel and mentoring over the last dozen or so years I doubt you’d even be able to find your way to the first tee of most significant American golf courses.

He`s baaaack! Thank god he is as Pat might finally come out of his shell and tell everyone what he really thinks on a given topic. Looking forward to many more exchanges gentlemen.

To get back to the topic at hand Yale has no fairway bunkers on 2,4,6,7,8,10,12,14,16,18. Additionally the bunker on 3 is not a fairway bunker in the traditional sense and 17 has a Principle`s Nose feature only down in front of the green.

[Phil McDade]

Fairway bunkers are so overrated ... and so many architectural experts seem to think if there is not a fairway bunker to avoid that there is "no strategy".

Mark Saltzman:  I had never thought about Perry Maxwell being especially tight with fairway bunker use, but I believe that's 100% right.  It might also explain the relative paucity of fairway bunkers at Crystal Downs -- particularly on the back nine after MacKenzie left!  There are no fairway bunkers on #7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17 or 18 at the Downs, but those holes have plenty of interest.

A very good thread on Maxwell's use of the land to avoid fairway bunkering and still create holes of interest and strategy:

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,49744.0.html

[Bill Brightly]

Fishers Island is a good example.

[Bill_McBride]

In the meantime, I can see Pat's smile at your playful barbs.

Cheers, Mike

Mike, those were only warming up jabs.  Waiting for the barbs.   It's exciting having Tom Paul and his voice recognition typing system back in the tree house!

[jeffwarne]

Fairway bunkers are so overrated ... and so many architectural experts seem to think if there is not a fairway bunker to avoid that there is "no strategy".

Can you provide an example of how to provide strategy without fairway bunkers when offering/protecting preferred fairway locations?
Fairway mounding,severe downhill/sidehill lies?
Or are you saying finding those preferred angles/locations is its' own reward and doesn't always need to be a risk reward/strategic decision?
Thanks

[Tom_Doak]

Fairway bunkers are so overrated ... and so many architectural experts seem to think if there is not a fairway bunker to avoid that there is "no strategy".

Can you provide an example of how to provide strategy without fairway bunkers when offering/protecting preferred fairway locations?
Fairway mounding,severe downhill/sidehill lies?
Or are you saying finding those preferred angles/locations is its' own reward and doesn't always need to be a risk reward/strategic decision?
Thanks

Jeff:

All of the above.

At Crystal Downs, you've got curving or angled fairways like #4 and #12 and #16 where being able to adjust ball flight is the principal strategic advantage.  And then you've got fairways like #8 and #13 and #15 and #17 where placing your tee shot in a small area where you get a [relatively] level lie gives you a significant advantage for the approach.  And then there are holes like #10, where just being on the right side [even in the rough] is better than the left side of the fairway, because of the tilt of the green.

We've tried to incorporate some of these ideas into our course at Streamsong.  There are several holes there where if you hit the ball to the wrong side of the fairway, the ball bounces further off line into a position with a worse angle, and/or that much further from the green leaving a longer approach shot.

[Ben Sims]

I've been a golf architecture pen pal of a friend in the business for a bit over a month now, and he asked me to rank in importance greens, routing, green's bunkering, and fairway bunkering.  Of course greens and routing came first, but I argued that fairway bunkering was more important than green's bunkering.

The reason is that green's bunkering is relatively one dimensional from my point of view.  That isn't to say it's simple, but there's really only a few variables to consider when placing green's bunkering.

Fairway bunkering is much tougher IMO.  Too much and it becomes mundane and repetitive.  Too little and you're running the risk that tee shots will be of smaller consequence.  Poor positioning of those bunkers drives poor strategy.  Too many and maintenance becomes an issue.  Then there's the issue of aesthetic, whether to hide parts of the bunker from view. 

I am not a fan of over bunkered fairways.  However, I can't think of many truly great courses in the US that don't have them in relative abundance.

[David_Elvins]

Patrick,

Maybe AWT did not think the site was suited to fairway bunkers?

I would agree with the camp that think that fairway bunkers are over-used especially on sites that aren't sandy or do not offer natural undulations to cut fairway bunkers into.  On clay sites, a lot of greens are 'built up' or terraced into slopes and this allows greenside bunkers to be constructed in a relatively natural looking manner.   It is a lot more difficult to construct a fairway bunker that looks ok as there is normally less earth moved to start with in the middle of the golf hole and any 'mounding' to cut a bunker into can look out of place.

Also I don't believe that there is much point having a fairway bunker if there is not enough width to allow the golfer to play safely away from the bunker.

[Alex Lagowitz]

Colgate University Seven Oaks GC has zero fairway bunkers

Its a RTJ design and I've always wondered why none were ever put in.
Probably costs.

[Eric_Terhorst]

Your U.S. Open course, Olympic Club Lake, is the obvious answer to this question whenever it comes up.  I believe there was only one fairway bunker (on #6, a par 4) until Mr. Davis decided to put a new one in at 17--and even that one might be considered a greenside bunker.

[Sean_A]

I agree with Tom.  Good design shouldn't have to rely on fairway bunkers. 

Burnham & Berrow has about an even number of fairway/greenside bunkers.  About 45 in total with a a few more than half around
greens.  4 holes with no sand.  

Pennard has maybe 30 tops with probably close to 2 to 1 ratio in favour of greens.  4 holes have no sand.  

Huntercombe I think has 13 bunkers with maybe 8 around greens.  Is it 9 holes without sand?

Beau Desert only has about a dozen fairway bunkers out of 45 or so.  I think there are only 2 holes with no sand.  But Beau could lose a ton of bunkers and not be any effected.

Ciao