Furrowed Bunkers

[Matt Frey, PGA]

Oakmont used to create deep furrows in their bunkers using rakes like the one in this photo:


I'm just curious about people's opinion on this (even though it's no longer in practice). One one hand, a bunker is a hazard and should be hard, on the other hand, as a PGA Professional, why torture the high-handicappers even more by making a generally hard part of their games harder?

[Thomas Dai]

What would have been the raking schedule/frequency during the period of time that the famous Fownes rakes were in use?


Lots of sand to rake, a manpower intensive activity, a heavyweight rake needing quite a bit of strength to operate etc and all during a period in time when the back of the clubhead or the 'sliding shoe' was the conventional method of dealing with the shot-mark and footprints after a sand shot had been played.


Atb

[Ken Fry]

Is this a practice that could be brought out for "championship" caliber players on a tournament basis?

Ken

[Pete_Pittock]

Merely replace a club with a rut iron. Concerns alleviated.

[Matt Frey, PGA]

Is this a practice that could be brought out for "championship" caliber players on a tournament basis?

Ken

It's funny you should ask this. I distinctly remember that NBC ran an expose during the 2003 U.S. Amateur telecast about the rakes and furrows and at that point, the USGA said that the club could pick one bunker to use the rakes in for the 2007 U.S. Open. Clearly, that did not happen, but I am not sure why it didn't.

[Kalen Braley]

Is this a practice that could be brought out for "championship" caliber players on a tournament basis?

Ken

They did this at the Memorial a few years back and the players whined worse than a 2 year old on a sugar fueled tantrum.  Given the Majors are all essentially one-offs for PGA Tour players, perhaps they should start doing this.  If they don't like it?  They can just take their ball and go home! 

[Charlie Ray]

I think you will witness this line of thought throughout the next few days at the US Open:  'He purposely played into the bunker to escape the rough.'   Bunkers are defined as hazards, but manicured.  Illogical.  I firmly believe bunkers exist primarily to add contrast and be 'pretty.'   However to appease the 'fairness' of the game the furrowed bunker would be an interesting solution for professional play; although no way it happens.

[Don Mahaffey]

Merely replace a club with a rut iron. Concerns alleviated.

Anyone else google rut iron? Might have to get me one of those

[Peter Pallotta]

Matt -
as referenced by Daniel Wexler in the recent edition of the World Atlas of Golf, the great Jimmy Demaret had a wonderful quip about the rake that Oakmont was then using to furrow the bunkers:

"If they'd raked North Africa with it, Rommel would have never gotten past Casablanca".

Peter

[John McCarthy]

A few weeks back I played HawksHead in New Haven, MI.  It is built on sand and has a bit of a Pine Valley look, down to a mini Hell's Half Acre on 18.  On most holes there are large waste areas/bunkers without rakes.  I am not sure this is a regular practice but they ran Sand Pros or their ilk through the waste areas the morning before we need off.  It made the sand extremely fluffy and a ton of embedded lies. 

This fluffy sand in fairway bunkers made me think of the old rakes at Oakmont.

Also, is grooming waste areas a common practice at other courses?

[Bill_Yates]

I understand that the furrows were raked so that to get the next shot moving in a direction toward the green, the player was always playing across the furrows. Basically, when you played what was designed to be " hardest course in the world", bunker shots were always being played from the equivalent of a buried lie. 

Notice too that the pews in the "church pew" bunkers also force the players to play across them in order to advance a ball toward the green.

Perhaps these are two of the many reasons Oakmont was and remains the seminal example of what we call "penal architecture." 

[Jon Wiggett]

Matt,


even beginner require a challenge which requires some sort of competence to over come meaning that the game needs to be compellingly difficult without being too hard but then again not to easy. Being too easy will be just as uninteresting as being impossible which is why most people over the age of 5 do not play naughts & crosses (tic-tac-toe?). The best idea would be not to rake bunkers and leaving it to players to use club or foot to smooth the bunkers with the GK raking once a week for weed control.


As for beginners, in my experience once a player learns to hit the ball 100 yards then learning to get the ball out of the bunker is the easiest shot as it requires no rel precision though doing it with control is another matter.


Jon