I wrote about this in Golf Course Architecture magazine after attending the Masters in 2012. I couldn't find a link to that article, but if interested, here's the text:
Bunker Blitz at Augusta?
Towards the end of his life, at the point in the early 1930s when he and Bobby Jones designed the Augusta National Golf Club, Alister Mackenzie became a strong advocate of the restrained use of purely penal bunkers. His Bayside course on Long Island, New York (which no longer exists), opened in 1932 with just 19 bunkers on eighteen holes.
In an article in The American Golfer the following year, Mackenzie wrote: “On many courses there are far too many bunkers. The sides of the fairways are riddled with them, and many of these courses would be equally interesting if half of the bunkers were turfed over making them into grassy hollows.”
By this time, Mackenzie had (at least in part) made his reputation by designing some of golf’s most stylish sand hazards. But he considered the routing of the golf course and the design of the greens to be of paramount importance. If each hole was laid-out to take advantage of every feature and contour to create interest and strategy, an abundance of artificial sand bunkers was simply unnecessary.
Mackenzie brought this approach to the former Fruitlands Nursery property at Augusta. With input from Jones, he devised a brilliant routing over a steep property then designed an incomparable collection of pitched and heaving greens to enhance the interest and strategy of the layout. With reliance on topography, plus greens that demand solid ballstriking and heady play, Mackenzie and Jones agreed that not many sand bunkers were required at Augusta. Their original plan, which has long been recognised as one of the most revolutionary concepts in the history of golf course architecture, included 36 bunkers.
“I then consulted Bobby Jones as to the possibility of eliminating some of these as I thought it might be possible to do so without detriment to the interest and strategy of the course,” Mackenzie continued. “After careful study, we decided to leave out fourteen of them, leaving only twenty-two bunkers in all.”
When Augusta opened for play in January 1933, 14 of the course’s ultra-wide fairway areas and eight green complexes were without bunkers. Four holes were entirely devoid of sand. Many significant and well-documented changes to the original design of Augusta have been made since, including the removal of original bunkers and the installation of a number of new hazards. Today, Augusta features 44 bunkers.
I was fortunate to attend this year’s Masters. While walking around studying the course, I was reminded that bunkers have very little to do with the genius of the design. I then wondered: how many of the sand hazards at Augusta could be considered purely penal, and eliminated without detriment to the interest and strategy of the course?
A bunker on the outside bend of the fairway at the par five second immediately comes to mind. This bunker was installed at the suggestion of Gene Sarazen during the mid-1960s, and does nothing to enhance the strategy and interest of the hole. It’s a purely penal hazard. Ben Hogan immediately condemned it, along with two fairway bunkers at the eighteenth installed a few years later, reportedly in an attempt to Nicklaus proof the home hole.
Jack himself designed a cluster of four bunkers left of the third fairway during the 1980s that’s clearly at odds with the overall bunker style at Augusta. And these particular hazards do nothing to enhance the interest and strategy of a brilliant short par four made by its unique, L-shape green elevated atop a small plateau, surrounded by tightly mown slopes and knobs.
Bunkers behind the fifth, seventh and eleventh greens may prevent balls from reaching worse fates, but applying Mackenzie’s strict rule, they’re unnecessary as well.
Similarly, a greenside bunker at the fifteenth, near the front right corner of the putting surface could go. This bunker was installed during the mid-1950s, replacing a mound which would presumably complicate recovery play just as well.
Sacrilege it may be, but I also wonder if the course’s last remaining ‘Mackenzie bunker’ at the tenth is required. This bunker was a greenside hazard at Augusta’s original tenth green. It’s now some fifty yards short of a green created by Perry Maxwell in 1935. Some 370 yards off the Masters tee, the bunker could also be considered purely penal, and is mostly a decorative remnant these days. The same can be said about four bunkers near the green at the legendary par five thirteenth, which Mackenzie described as bunkerless at the time it was originally designed.
That’s a total of (at least) fifteen bunkers that could, theoretically, be eliminated at Augusta without detriment to the interest and strategy of the course, leaving twenty-nine in all, just seven more than the course featured on opening day.
Sand bunkers continue to be a pet peeve for a majority of golfers. And they’re high price line on most golf course maintenance budgets. Yet bunkers are a crutch in contemporary golf course design. If a hole looks too plain, bunkers. Too easy, more bunkers. Frankly, there’s no sophistication in this approach; particularly in light of today’s economic realities and the desire to encourage more people to take up and continue to play golf.
Granted, not many courses possess the incredibly solid structure that Augusta exemplifies. But this seemingly pointless exercise begs another interesting question: If Augusta could hypothetically lose as many as 15 bunkers with little to no affect on the interest and strategy of the course, how many more superfluous sand hazards throughout the world of golf could be eliminated on the same grounds?
Every site and every project is different. But this is definitely something to think about. Perhaps, as Mackenzie stressed nearly 80 years ago, we should only be building bunkers where they genuinely enhance the interest and strategy of the course.