[David Ober]

For the expert player, getting up and down from PGA Tour-condition sand is almost always significantly easier than getting up and down from greenside ROUGH, all other things being equal (lie, pin position, etc.).

The reason that players' up and down percentages are higher than their greenside bunker save percentages is due to the fact that up and down percentages include ALL missed greens, including those that are missed by only a fraction of an inch on the fringe or in the short grass where the player can putt or chip from a perfect lie. From those conditions, expert players come close to making as many as they fail to get up and down, and those types of missed greens account for a sizeable amount of the greens missed by expert players.

Here's my list, in reverse order of difficulty, with all other things being equal (pin position, green firmness, etc.):

1) Chip or putt from the fringe or fairway-length grass just off the green
2) Chip from light to moderate rough
3) Greenside bunker shot from good, consistent sand (like they have at all PGA Tour venues)
3) Pitch from light rough or fairway grass
5) Pitch from moderate to severe rough
5) Greenside bunker shot from poorly maintained bunker

Not sure if that helps the discussion or not.

Personally, I do wish that bunkers were more difficult and that they played more like hazards than they do currently. That would require a great deal more strategy on approach shots than is currently needed on most courses....

I don't see any actual data that suggests recovery from sand is easier than recovery from elsewhere. If you look at scrambling statistics, you'll see that the top bunker players and top scramblers both get up and down about 65% of the time from their respective lie of specialty. However, if you take a look at the MEDIAN player in sand save percentage, he gets up and down from sand about 50% of the time while the median player in scrambling percentage gets up and down from around the green about 58% of the time. That's a pretty significant advantage for avoiding a bunker.

I know a lot of pros think they'd rather be in sand than grass around the green, but numbers show most of them should be careful what they wish for. Making bunker sand more difficult would surely affect scoring though, and one thing I like about the idea is that it seems like it would make things tougher for the low handicap, strong sand player while not really changing anything for the higher handicap player who stinks from the sand regardless of type.

[Patrick_Mucci]

"Who cares about the PGA Tour guys?"

Jim S. -

It would appear Pat Mucci does, as he has specifically referenced bunker play in PGA Tour & championship golf events on this thread.


David, If you would read more carefully, you'd see that Jason introduced PGA Tour Pros and events into this thread.
DT

[David_Tepper]

Pat M. -

Your comments:

"Let me bifurcate the exercise."

"What would be wrong with excavating existing bunker sand at a hosting club and replacing it with the more difficult sand for a PGA or USGA tournament, and then when the tournament leaves town, reversing the process ?"

DT

[jonathan_becker]

Patrick,

Back to your original post, and you can obviously relate to this, but in my two plays at Seminole, IMO part of the difficulty in the bunkering was trying to predict how the ball was going to react out of the sand.  I don't know if it was intentional or not, but there seemed to be a variety of mixtures everywhere.

For example, I remember being in the right fw bunker on 4 and there were all kinds of tiny shell pieces mixed in, then being in the front left greenside bunker on 14 the sand played a little moist and heavy.  Furthermore, I get in one of the right greenside bunkers on 15 and the sand was like dark baby powder and similar to the western dune sand that's exposed in between the front nine holes. 

Maybe it had something to do with the watering practices, but even if it did, the bunker sand consistency does not playthe same from hole to hole and that makes for a real challenge.

[Jason Thurman]

David Ober, do you have a source for your list or is it based on your own observations? Just wondering. I'd be interested in the data if it existed, and it seems like something Dave Pelz or somebody might have tracked by now.

And yes, I was the one who introduced the Tour into this thread, though only because I couldn't find a statistical database for amateur scratch players, 5 handicaps, 10 handicaps, and 20 handicaps. The Internet isn't all it's cracked up to be.

[David Ober]

David Ober, do you have a source for your list or is it based on your own observations? Just wondering. I'd be interested in the data if it existed, and it seems like something Dave Pelz or somebody might have tracked by now.

And yes, I was the one who introduced the Tour into this thread, though only because I couldn't find a statistical database for amateur scratch players, 5 handicaps, 10 handicaps, and 20 handicaps. The Internet isn't all it's cracked up to be.

They're my own observations, but they're spot-on. I'm really, really smart when it comes to golf.... ;-)

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pat M. -

Your comments:

"Let me bifurcate the exercise."

"What would be wrong with excavating existing bunker sand at a hosting club and replacing it with the more difficult sand for a PGA or USGA tournament, and then when the tournament leaves town, reversing the process ?"

David, like I said, you're reading comprehension skills are woefully lacking.

The above comment appeared in reply # 9, Jason's reference to the PGA Tour occured in reply # 5.

Please try to read more deliberately and have someone explain that the number 5 occurs before number 9 

[David_Tepper]

Pat M. -

All I said was you "referenced" bunker toughness in regards to PGA Tour play, which your post (#9), in fact, did. I did not say you initiated the subject of bunker play on the PGA Tour.

But since you are so concerned with numbers, why are you so reluctant to quantify some measure of gauging bunker toughness? Competitive golf is a game of data and statistics. PGA Tour data presents a very large sample size across a wide variety of courses. How many strokes are lost in bunkers, a reasonable measure for how tough bunkers are playing, is easy enough to determine.

Which of course makes issues with specific bunkers, whether they be at Pine Valley or AGNC, irrelevant. Due to their depth, slope, location, etc. some bunkers are going to play harder than others, regardless of the nature of sand in the bunker or how that sand in groomed.

Over the past several years you have regularly claimed that bunker play is too easy, yet you have not presented any objective criteria upon which you have made that judgement. If you can't do that, how will you know that bunker play has become too hard or whether it is just hard enough? Or will you just offer us your Justice Potter Stewart judgement!  

DT      

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pat M. -

All I said was you "referenced" bunker toughness in regards to PGA Tour play, which your post (#9), in fact, did. I did not say you initiated the subject of bunker play on the PGA Tour.

I referenced it in response to Jason's post.

But since you are so concerned with numbers, why are you so reluctant to quantify some measure of gauging bunker toughness? Competitive golf is a game of data and statistics.

Because it's the tail wagging the dog and a generic exercise.
I gave what I thought was an excellent example, the 11th at ANGC and the acceptance of a very low percentage of successful bunker recovery shots, in the context of the existing water hazard.

Quantifying hypothetical or projected percentiles of successful or unsuccessful bunker recoveries is impossible.
There are too many factors that go into bunker design.

However, I'm willling to learn something each and every day.

So, tell us, how would you design a bunker that will produce recovery rates of 38 % on the PGA Tour ?
28 % ?
18 % ?

PGA Tour data presents a very large sample size across a wide variety of courses. How many strokes are lost in bunkers, a reasonable measure for how tough bunkers are playing, is easy enough to determine.

OK, so tell us the differences between a bunker that will produce a 38 % recovery rate from a bunker that will produce at 28 % recovery rate from a bunker that will produce an 18 % recovery rate ?

Which of course makes issues with specific bunkers, whether they be at Pine Valley or AGNC, irrelevant. Due to their depth, slope, location, etc. some bunkers are going to play harder than others, regardless of the nature of sand in the bunker or how that sand in groomed.
That's not true.
The type of sand and the method of grooming will have a significant impact on recovery percentiles.

Over the past several years you have regularly claimed that bunker play is too easy, yet you have not presented any objective criteria upon which you have make that judgement.

Of course I have, you just haven't paid enough attention to my posts.

At one point I cited several PGA Tour Pros encouraging their ball to "get in the bunker" as it erred from it's intended flight.
Why do you suppose that is ?

My guess is that most of your play has been with the benefit of a Lob-Wedge.
For decades I played before the Lob-Wedge was invented, with a Sand Wedge..
Then, Ping came out with a Lob-Wedge that was the equivalent of stealing strokes.
Everyone on Tour jumped on them.
That club alone made bunker play infinitely easier, as Sarazen's Sand Wedge did back in the 30's

If you can't do that, how will you know that bunker play has become too hard or whether it is just hard enough?

Who says I can't make a bunker more difficult ?

You on the other hand, claim, by inference, that you can design a bunker that will produce 12 %, 22 % and 32 % less recoveries, that you can design by statistical profiles, so please, answser the questions I posed above, how would you build the bunkers such that you can make them incrementally more difficult to any percentage you desire ?

Or will you just offer us your Justice Potter Stewart judgement!  

I think even you can distinguish the devil's asshole bunker from an elbow bunker        

[Joe Jemsek]

I know many courses that reconstruct and resand their bunkers, but, I've never heard of a club selecting the sand, based on it's difficulty.

While it wasn't the club, the PGA Tour deselected the sand at Dubs Dread because it was too difficult. Ironic, or what?

Joe Jemsek was so proud of that soft silica that he had shipped in special from Green Lake Wisc.

It never ceases to amaze how a club will pick a sand because of it's color. Even when that color is not close in color to the native sand on prop.

Adam,

I was always told the original sand for the Dubsdread course was white silica from Ottawa, Illinois. It was a byproduct of the glass making industry, but over the years the sand became increasingly smaller and rounder in particle in size. Green Lake may have been substitute for the changing Ottawa. By the late 80's the bunker sand was very soft, especially in faces of the bunkers. I recall people loosing balls in the faces, getting sand in their golf shoes, and fried eggs lies were common. Before the Western Open moved to Dubsdread(1991) the tour specified a uniform sand depth and the silica sand was removed. During the tournament years the course used "Meyer" sand from Northern IL. We still search for reasonably priced and playable white sand. During our recent renovation, the White colored Best sand was over double the cost of the Meyer. Tour said they had no preference, but preferred Best because it created a predictable lie.   

I thought furrowing was an effective way to make a course more difficult for a tournament. Nicklaus furrowed at the Memorial a few years ago and the tour players were less than pleased.

[Mike_Trenham]

Don't forget the impact of slope on a lie in a bunker.

Upslope off firm sand very easy and likely easier than rough due to less risk of an awful lie
Downslope off sand almost always harder than a similar slope from the rough

Pete Dye used the slope towards the green trick a lot, not sure if he still does.  Otherwise I rarely see it.  Works best with grass faced bunkers from what I remember

[Patrick_Mucci]

Don't forget the impact of slope on a lie in a bunker.

Upslope off firm sand very easy and likely easier than rough due to less risk of an awful lie
Downslope off sand almost always harder than a similar slope from the rough

Pete Dye used the slope towards the green trick a lot, not sure if he still does.  Otherwise I rarely see it.  Works best with grass faced bunkers from what I remember

Mike,

I remember Bob Von Hagge telling me the same thing, that he liked to incorporate a slight upslope for the purpose of helping the less skilled golfers

[Doug Siebert]

Pat -

I assume you are referring to greenside bunkers.

Hitting into a bunker costs the best players in the world, playing on the best groomed bunkers and putting on the smoothest greens, 1/2 a shot on average.

What you do think it costs the average 5-, 10- or 15-handicap golfers?

(Speaking from personal experience, observed and otherwise , I would say hitting into a greenside bunker costs the average 15-handicap at least 1 shot.)

What do you think the appropriate/typical penalty for hitting into a bunker should be?

DT  

David,

That's misleading.  Yes, it is a half shot lost versus HITTING THE GREEN, but that's not a proper comparison.  The comparison should be missing the green in the bunker versus missing the green elsewhere.  Looking at the sand saves versus overall up and down percentage, there is very little difference for tour pros.  If you look at decent (single digit or less) amateur golfers, I believe the same is generally true (us mortals aren't nearly as good as them as getting up and down from the sand, but we are equally not so good as getting up and down from greenside)

The main difference greenside bunkers make versus not building them at all is for double digit handicaps, because most have no clue about the proper technique and combined with fear the bunkers are often quite costly to them.  If the bunkers were all filled in with grass it would hardly be noticeable to the pros and good amateurs, but it would make a huge difference to the bogey and double bogey golfers.

If we follow Patrick's prescription and make the bunkers tougher then it will hurt the better player but make little difference for the bad player - the bunkers are already a bad place for him.  I believe this is a good thing, as it is rare to find anything one can do to a golf course to make it tougher for good players without making it exponentially worse for bad players.

I've long advocated using the type of soft fluffy sand that makes it far more likely for the ball to plug.  The better players will be disproportionately affected by this - they are hitting the ball on a higher trajectory and thus are more likely to fly into the upslope of a bunker where buried lies generally occur.  The 20 handicap is hitting a lower trajectory shot and far more likely to bounce or roll into a bunker and therefore won't see many buried lies - but for him, bunkers are already bad, so there's no reason to make them even worse by giving the poor guy a buried lie.  If you give a tour pro a good chance of a buried lie, he's likely to think a bit more before challenging the pin tucked tight behind it, rather than today where on most courses he plays the bunker is just another "not green" area as far as he's concerned.

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