Bunker sand

[Tommy Williamsen]

I recently played golf in Nevada and Utah. One of the things that stood out was bunker sand. It varied in color, texture, and firmness. I am used to different sand and actually like figure out how to play out of different kinds of sand. That said, however, the color of the sand makes a difference. I played Wolf Creek and the sand was pure white.





At Sand Hollow the sand was the same color as the surroundings.





The sand at WC makes for nice pictures but is totally out of place. The sand at SH is more natural. What are your preferences?

[Greg Smith]

I think the issue isn't so much sand color as style of bunker.  In the WC picture, the "fingers and shamrocks" style looks out of place against the desert environment.  In fact, I think "fingers and shamrocks" look out of place almost everywhere (but Tillinghast made a few nice ones at Winged Foot ...). 

Bunkers like the ones at WC are obviously man-made (as is the rest of the green golf course in a DESERT).  So why try to round off and sculpt everything?  If the course is flat out created and engineered out of nothing, go ahead and use an honest, completely engineered bunker style.   That is one strength of Seth Raynor's work -- at least he was not trying to hide his interventions.

If you're going to use a totally manufactured bunker style, then why not go ahead and use totally manufactured white sand just to highlight the manufactured-ness?  I think that would look fine on a Raynor-style course.   It would have been interesting to see Raynor try and build something in a place like Utah.

On the other hand, the "natural" brown sand is NOT going to look fine in those shamrock bunkers at WC.  It wouldn't look fine in hypothetical Raynor-style bunkers either.  If you're going to use the "natural" brown sand to match the desert, you need to use more "natural" scraggly, random bunker edges -- and maybe fade the bunkers into the brownish desert surrounds and/or waste areas.

Those "natural" bunkers would look TERRIBLE with pure white sand -- at least in the desert.  In order to get away with the pure white sand in a "natural" style, the course would have to be in a light-colored, native sandy area -- such as the dune holes at Cypress Point (which is probably the sterling example).

So -- it's not really the sand itself that's the big deal, IMO.

[Jason Topp]

Red

[Tommy Williamsen]

Greg, I understand what you are saying. To some extent I agree. The entire bunker style doesn't fit the location. It is a rugged site and deserves a rugged look. I played a Nicklaus course not far from WC and he incorporated a rugged look with native type sand. It works better than the look one would get in, say, New Jersey.

[Josh Stevens]

That red sand reminds me of Royal Adelaide.  Lovely to just dig a hole and there it is

Does anyone in the world actually think white sand looks good?

[Adam Lawrence]

Well clearly some people do, or they wouldn't pay through the nose to buy it and have it trucked in...

[Ian Andrew]

Does anyone in the world actually think white sand looks good?

Yes, from my own experiences, almost every member at every private club would choose white sand.
Perhaps that's a North American thing, but that's the common refrain for new sand.

[Peter Pallotta]

Besides whatever prestige that it might signify, I wonder if visibility is also part of the appeal. A kind of visibility that is meant to highlight the hazard, to purposely set it off/apart from its surroundings as a sign/symbol of the course's difficulty. I imagine few members of a high end private want their course to look like the local muni, and even fewer want it to seem to be easy/a pushover.

[Mike_Young]

I know of one course in Costa Rica where the sand was brought from Ohio just to wash in the Fall rains.  As we have progressed down the road of overkill on golf courses , sand is one of the big ones.  Technically speaking I am sure the USGA and others have gotten the "sand" science down to where it can be argued as to the BEST sand out there but it's hard to justify for most places and those places should use whatever is available locally.  Adapt to it and accept it as what you will use at that particular course.  My unscientific opinion is that if sand were the color of the grass we wouldn't use nearly as much.  It's the contrast we like in the artform.