Lost LHS bunkers on Maxwell's 10th green at Augusta

[Neil_Crafter]

Looking back over the various Maxwell photos on the Green Jacket Auctions website via their search function - search Maxwell in the advanced search function for their Fall 2009 auction - I came across this photo of the 10th green.



There are also other photographs that show this pair of front left bunkers. I have never heard these bunkers mentioned before and wonder how long they lasted before they were filled in? I imagine they just proved too difficult on this difficult hole.

[Tom_Doak]

Neil:

Great find.  I don't remember anybody ever mentioning those bunkers, although they might have been in Ron Whitten's thorough architectural history of Augusta ... or, he might have missed them.

I don't see why being in a bunker there would be tougher than bouncing down the hill to the left, as good as players are from the sand today.  Maybe that equation was different in 1937-38, though.

[Sven Nilsen]

Neil:

Just a question, are those greenside bunkers or the backend of the fairway bunker?  Do any of the other photos clarify this?

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, Neil.

Yes, a hard hole: with bunkers left and right it's hard for me to imagine what the ideal line off the tee/best side of the fairway would've been back then -- considerations that were, I imagine, much more important then than they are now.

Peter

[Neil_Crafter]

Sven
They are definitely greenside bunkers as they are level with the front right bunker.

Tom, I hadn't seen them or heard them mentioned before either, which is why I thought I'd post the photo to see if anyone else had. Certainly the bunkers would assist in holding up a shot that would otherwise bounce down the hill, perhaps that's why Maxwell put them there. Quite out of scale with his RHS bunker though, and very much out of scale with Mac's old bunker down the fairway.

[Neil_Crafter]

The LHS bunkers were not there when this photo was taken, and the RHS bunker was actually two bunkers (as per the first photos on the other thread).



But when this one is taken, the two small bunkers at the LHS have been put in and the right side bunkers joined together to make one large one. The plot thickens.......

[Sven Nilsen]

Neil:

Happy to be proved wrong on this as this would be a really cool discovery, but the way they look they have the exact same shape as the last two tongues on the Mac Bunker.  

There's another photo on the greenjacket site that has some white spots at the front left of the green (beyond a clearly visible Mac Bunker), but in the case of that photo I think your looking at splotches of sunlight.  There are a bunch of other photos that show the similarity between what is in this photo and the fairway bunker.  Could be a case of foreshortening (if that's the proper technical term).

Just my read on it.

[Bryan Drennon]

I have to agree with Sven. That would have been a really cool find though. It's never been mentioned here on anywhere to my knowledge.

[Pete_Pittock]

I'd have to agree with Sven. I am looking at a 1934 photo on page 145 of Stan Byrdy's book Alister Mackenzie's Masterpiece The Augusta National Golf course and the two bunkers are identical to the front lobes of the Mackenzie bunker. The positioning of the background trees seems verification. It's not as much foreshorteing as it is the relative elevations of the photographers

[Bill_McBride]

Look at the last photo in Neil's post #5 and you'll clearly see the fairway bunker and the two left and green side bunkers, with quite a distance between. 

[Alex Miller]

Look at the last photo in Neil's post #5 and you'll clearly see the fairway bunker and the two left and green side bunkers, with quite a distance between. 

Those just as easily look like light coming through shadows. I'm inclined to agree with Sven, once again.

[Neil White]

Neil,

I have found a link to a 1941 aerial of the course

http://128.192.128.20/lizardtech/iserv/getimage?cat=gaph&item=/richmond/1941/lh-3b-076.sid&cp=0.2575869045429465,0.6192016263167622&lev=-1&wid=740&hei=740&

It doesn't appear that the two bunkers you refer to are showing - you can make out the RHS greenside bunkers, however there is nothing showing on the LHS.

Neil.

[Bill_McBride]

Look at the last photo in Neil's post #5 and you'll clearly see the fairway bunker and the two left and green side bunkers, with quite a distance between. 

Those just as easily look like light coming through shadows. I'm inclined to agree with Sven, once again.

To me they have a 3D quality, plus a different shade of white from the light visible on the green. 

[Sven Nilsen]

Bill:

All of these Maxwell photos were taken right about the same time, and possibly all during a short time period (just after the 10th hole was redone).  If we start collecting all of the photos taken during that time and posting them here, we'll have a pretty good idea of whether or not those left side bunkers ever existed.

Neil:

I think if you look closely at the 2nd photo in your last post, you'll see that the right side bunker is still actually two separate bunkers, its just hard to make out the thin strip dividing them.

To start the investigation, here are a few more photos from other threads.  I have three more photos that I'll try to get uploaded later today:

MacKenzie original (gives you a good idea of the contours at the end of the Mac Bunker):


Maxwell era:



Early Postcard:


1950:

[Neil_Crafter]

Sven and others
I have come to the conclusion, thanks to your posts and re-examining the photos that I was mistaken in thinking there were two greenside front left bunkers at one time, and agree that these were in fact the end bays of the Mac bunker. The appearance of the two bunkers on the longer shot must be light effects somehow.
Thanks again for everyone's contribution