Two grand essays by golf architect Ian Andrew now bracket 2015. An unabridged take on bunkers by the man who recently helped restore Stanley Thompson's masterpiece at St. George's joins his treatise on Jasper Park that graced our pages in February.
His analysis is broken into subsections: Origin of Bunkers, Why do We Need Bunkers, The Value of Depth, Fairness, Psychology, Strategy, Aesthetics and concludes with Are They Losing Their Value? That progression tells you all you need to know! While most would place aesthetics near the top I agree with Ian that it is of lesser importance than the other aspects. A bunker, like your house, has its value tied to location, location, LOCATION.
Hard to imagine a more scintillating topic for dorks like us. Think about great courses and golf regions and many first visualize bunkering. Ideate Sand Hills, Royal Melbourne, The Old Course, Riviera, Merion, the list goes on and on. Whether they are revetted pots, graceful capes and bays, or unkempt pits these sandy recesses punctuate, embellish, and almost define the golf course. I love this quote at the end from Ian:
It’s the one architectural element that creates contrast as it acts the counterpoint to all the other harmonious elements of a golf course. It’s the feature that clearly distinguishes one course visually from others. When exceptionally well used bunkers can take the most pedestrian piece of ground and leave the player with a complex puzzle to solve. When brilliantly placed, even a single bunker like the Road Hole Bunker can dictate the route of play on preceding shots. When deep and disastrous enough it can place doubt in the most confident swing but most importantly even the most egregious of hazards can be overcome with one single moment of brilliance. That’s the perfect balance. No other hazard has quite the same impact.Clearly, his new dissertation is an amalgam of history, learned observation and personal philosophy. He shrewdly augments his prose and photos with quotes from the Masters. One of the best is by Ian's favorite builder of bunkers, Alister MacKenzie, who wrote:
"No hole is a good hole unless it has one or more hazards in the direct line of the hole." How true, yet do ~2% of the holes in the world possess that attribute?!
How have architects gotten bunker placement so wrong for so long?! 
Personally, I am suspect of the merit of any bunker that isn't surrounded by short grass - sadly, only a few are.Happily, Ian enjoys composing these thought-provoking pieces as much as we like reading them. More writing is on the way next year from him too but in the meanwhile, see what you think. Here is the link:
http://golfclubatlas.com/on-bunkers-by-ian-andrew/Who would argue with Ian's contention that bunkers are too expensive and too important not to be done properly? Yet, compare your local course's bunkering schemes/presentation to the tenets that he espouses and you will likely conclude that the art of bunkering a course has a disturbingly long way to come. Best,