Finally some decent bunkers!

[jvisser]

Hi,

Last week I was at the PGA de Catalunya, right after the end of the European Tour Final Qualifying stage.
During the EPGA rules conference I was participating in, there was a talk on course set-up covering many interesting topics.

The main thing that stuck with me is their aim to have a firm bunker base with maximum an inch of loose sand.
At the stadium course, which I played twice, there was clearly less than the inch, probably half an inch and
consistently in all the bunkers I visited, or looked into. What a joy to play out of these bunkers!
I played quite a few courses this year and usually in Holland you have to watch out the sand doesn't get into your shoes
and it differs significantly from bunker to bunker.

The point I want to raise is, why are there so many bunkers with too much sand?
I know that at my home course, Noordwijk, recently some bunker faces have been reshaped
to make it easier to get out of the bunkers, but I feel that the main issue is the amount of sand
and not the faces which suited the links course it is fine in my opinion. A pot-bunker shape is fine
at a links course and keeps the little sand there should be in the bunker inside.
Now you can thin your ball out of some bunkers, making it significantly less of a hazard.
When your ball doesn't plug and rolls to the base of the bunker, a good shot will get the ball out.

Cheers,

     Jan

[David Davis]

Hey Jan,

While you were out living it up at PGA de Catalunya I was beating this topic to death, literally. I learned quite a lot from these guys as well as from a lot of research.

Here's the answers just FYI and if anyone cares to chime in again or for the first time more than welcome. In the mean time I wrote a report for us at NGC about procedures and these are being implemented as we speak so hopefully really soon we will have some different bunkers to experience.

At NGC it comes down to:

- the sand itself/shape of the sand grains. At NGC these are rounder as opposed to more angulated in shape allowing for easier compacting.
- links bunkers are more difficult to compact the sand in, this was actually not being done at NGC. PGA de Catalunya actually drives one of these machines in and prepares and compacts them all perfectly.
- as NGC has sandbased ground the bunkers have been put in with no bottom, this is in our case perhaps a construction mistake. We are going to experiment with overturned sod in a couple to see if that works.

Last week when we put the new bunker in on hole 7 what was really interesting for me was that the sand that was deep in the ground was compacted with the tractor after we did the shaping. That bunker was amazing right after that. Definitely comparable to what you experience in Spain. So it's possible and we are going to work on it.

I'd like to thank everyone that chimed in with input to help. I feel like an almost expert (ok just missing another 9,995 hours of experience required to become an expert).