Bunkers sans Rakes

[MCirba]

One of the unexpected positives coming out of the current Covid crisis for golf has been the re-institution of bunkers as unpredictable strategic hazards with random consequences ranging from relatively benign to severe.

The disappearance of rakes also speeds the game as less time is spent encircling the bunker to find a rake, less time spend raking, and more engagement in the actual playing of golf as an adventurous challenge against nature and the elements as one finds them.

In a perfect world, this new reality would expand to the PGA tour and various other major events but that's sadly unlikely.

[Rob Marshall]

One of the unexpected positives coming out of the current Covid crisis for golf has been the re-institution of bunkers as unpredictable strategic hazards with random consequences ranging from relatively benign to severe.

The disappearance of rakes also speeds the game as less time is spent encircling the bunker to find a rake, less time spend raking, and more engagement in the actual playing of golf as an adventurous challenge against nature and the elements as one finds them.

In a perfect world, this new reality would expand to the PGA tour and various other major events but that's sadly unlikely.

How is it unpredictable when you are allowed to move the ball one club length and give yourself a perfect lie?  No doubt not raking and removing the pin speeds up play.

[Jim Hoak]

I like no rakes/raking but with no moving the ball--so long as we can get people to smooth out the major foot prints with their feet.  PV does that--and it works.
This simplifies things, speeds up play--and makes a bunker a hazard again.  Let the prima donnas on the Tour live with it.

[Rob Marshall]

I like no rakes/raking but with no moving the ball--so long as we can get people to smooth out the major foot prints with their feet.  PV does that--and it works.
This simplifies things, speeds up play--and makes a bunker a hazard again.  Let the prima donnas on the Tour live with it.

PV is going to have players that understand that a lot better than your average course.

[MCirba]

Who said anything about moving the ball?


What's the point in that?

[Mark Pearce]

I have now played four rounds since we were allowed back on the course.  I am yet to suffer a bad lie in a bunker as a result of footprints.  I have had a couple of poached eggs, but unrelated to previous traffic in the bunker.  At my home club (The Northumberland GC)) we have two very different sands in our bunkers.  A lot of the bunkers have a quite course, dense and firm sand.  Others, which have been renovated or built more recently have a finer, softer and lighter sand.  What I have really noticed is that using feet or clubs to smooth the former, to some extent, is much easier than the latter.  Personally, I'd be delighted if an outcome of these restrictions was a move to a firmer sand in all bunkers.

[Jason Thurman]

I think Rob is alluding to how players are actually treating bunkers now that there aren't rakes on the course.


For example, at my club, official rules of play currently are that balls hit into a bunker may be moved one clublength and placed (no closer to the hole).


I understand that it's theoretically possible that removing rakes from the course will reinstitute bunkers as a true hazard. But the history of golf during my lifetime is that bitchy golfers get rewarded with more forgiving equipment, more consistent turf conditions, wooded areas marked as lateral hazards, and the gradual and slow elimination of rub of the green. Rather than reinstituting the bunker as a hazard, there's a real chance that golfers will create a world where bad lies in the bunker no longer exist, and where they get to pick up their ball and clean it before teeing it up in the sand to boot.


Bunkers are playing less like a hazard than ever right now.

[Rob Marshall]

Who said anything about moving the ball?


What's the point in that?

My club is doing the same as Jason's:


"at my club, official rules of play currently are that balls hit into a bunker may be moved one clublength and placed (no closer to the hole)"

Whats the point of trying to extract a ball  2 inches below the surface of the sand because it landed in a footprint? Where is the skill in that?


Our bunkers were rebuilt in the fall. The sand is deep and soft. Doing a good job with your foot is next to impossible.

[Thomas Dai]

Being permitted to move your ball 1 club length within a sand bunker, ie a preferred lie within a hazard!

I’m unsure whether to laugh or to cry!
Atb

[David_Tepper]

Sorry, I am not a fan of no rakes in bunkers. While I understand the current situation, the fact is too many golfers do a lousy job of raking a bunker. Expecting those golfers to do a decent job of smoothing a bunker with just their feet is wishful thinking.

[Sean_A]

I have only played one course since the lockdown...Cleeve Cloud.  The bunkers are a complete mess.  Footprints galore, ful of unseen rocks and sheep shit everywhere. I don't like it, but there aren't many bunkers so its fine...I mean I shouldn't really like a bunker...should I? However, I would hate to come across that situation on a course with 50 bunkers and deep faces. 

I don't like idea of having to import any sort of different sand to support no rakes. 

Ciao

[Lou_Duran]

I've played a lot during this shut-down and our bunkers are deplorable.  Even at Trinity Forest they were bad.  Me, I find the game difficult enough that I don't need to be further punished by conditions that were not considered in the design.  We too play moving the ball in the bunker, usually just rolling it with the club.  Our bunkers are such that ranking our deep tracks with a foot or a club just doesn't work.


Incidentally, I think that the USGA is allowing the "Committee" to declare unraked bunkers as ACC/GUR, and allowing a drop in the general area outside the bunker, nearest relief, no closer to the hole.  No doubt that moving the ball in the bunker is making that aspect of the game easier.

[Pete_Pittock]

My club has the same local rule as Jason. Pro decided that dropping would result in bad lies (it is a hazard, guy .


I carry a small rake, about 9" across, to smooth up afterwards, because we have fluffy sand.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I can see moving it in the bunker staying the norm.  Superintendents will point out the $100+ in savings from not having to rake every day when a member can just improve their lie for free, and pretty soon, boards all over the country (at least those who want to save money) will be on board.  The new status symbol will be a club where no improved lies are allowed.....or needed.


Maybe rub of the green will come in the form of a rock paper scissors battle with your opponent, also free. If you lose, you play the ball as it lies.

[Thomas Dai]

What next, a free drop from a pond?
Atb

[Ken Moum]

Being permitted to move your ball 1 club length within a sand bunker, ie a preferred lie within a hazard!

I’m unsure whether to laugh or to cry!
Atb

What can I say, we're a bunch of pussies.


In my discussions with a number of Scots, I get the impression that they look at golf is that it's somewhat of a test of character.  Not that any of them articulated that, but every single one who I told that the players where I lived at the time all wanted to move the ball before they hit it said, "That's na golf!"


The golfers where I lived saw golf as a game as a test of skill.  The randomness of links golf just isn't something that suited them. My first trip to Scotland was with a couple typical of that mind set.


My friend claimed to love every minute of it, bitched endlessly while he was there and says he'd never go back. Links golf was, for him, a one-time thing.


My wife and I, OTOH, have been back three times. Once for a month, once six weeks, and once seven weeks. We find the mindset of links golf and Scottish golfers to be a source of joy and enrichment.


Mind you, I'm not claiming I can actually read the minds of the golfers I've talked about, but it's what it looks like to me.   

[A.G._Crockett]

What next, a free drop from a pond?
Atb

I'm certain that you can see the difference. 


Two players who both hit their ball into a pond find themselves with an equal penalty for a bad shot.  Two players who hit their balls into a bunker in which one has a good, playable lie while the other finds his ball in a 4" deep footprint from an asshat who played earlier and didn't bother to smooth out the area is distinctly unequal and silly.

My group has the first three tee times 5 days a week, so I have yet to need to deal with a footprint in a bunker.  But I, like many of you, would find it difficult to accept the randomness of unraked/unsmoothed bunkers in a tournament or for money.  And from a GCA standpoint, the deep footprint removes any option for a heroic recovery, which may well have been the architect's intent when he placed the bunker there in the first place.


As to the Tour, I know if you all sit quietly and think about it for a few minutes, you'll be able to imagine Patrick Reed or Sergio Garcia, for instance, being a bit of a problem in bunkers with no rakes.  THAT discussion is a non-starter to me, and it has nothing to do with labeling those guys as primadonnas.

[Bernie Bell]

If you really want to test your character, hit your tee shots off a pinch of wet sand.  Is it really golf if you're using a modern contrivance like a wooden or, heaven forbid, a plastic tee?  We can also increase random consequences and speed play if we stop filling/replacing divots and fussing over ball marks on the green.  The sooner we can finish, the sooner we can get back into quarantine.

[Mark Pearce]

Two players who both hit their ball into a pond find themselves with an equal penalty for a bad shot.  Two players who hit their balls into a bunker in which one has a good, playable lie while the other finds his ball in a 4" deep footprint from an asshat who played earlier and didn't bother to smooth out the area is distinctly unequal and silly.

Two players who both hit their balls into the same area of rough can get very different results.  At the weekend my partner and I both missed our 6th fairway left.  He had a shocking lie and was barely able to move the ball forward.  Mine was sitting up and I was able to get a utility on it with no impediment.  Are you suggesting that we should pick and place in rough, for the sake of equity?

[Ken Moum]

What next, a free drop from a pond?
Atb

When someone from my side of the Atlantic Ocean suggests that it's unfair when two different players hit into a bunker and one gets a decent lie, while the other is in a footprint, they are merely expressing what American golf has been like for a long time.


Never mind that golf is filled with such inequities, and they are a large part of what make it so engaging and infuriating.


If two players hit into a bunker and one ball stays under the lip and the other one rolls to a flat lie in the bottom, no one would think much of...other than to complain bitterly.


But if it's a footprint, that's unacceptable...because? Well, because the guy who made it should have raked the damned thing.  On tour, I've been told that there's "proper" way to rake a bunker and if a caddy doesn't do it right, their player will hear about it. 


It's been some time coming for me as I'm 72 and had hickories cut down for me almost 70 years ago.  But within the last 20 years or so I decided to stop complaining about course conditions, not that I ever did it much, accept shitty  and bad breaks as a test of my ability to overcome them, and just play the game.


I'm happier than any of the complainers I know, and my scores aren't all that much different.

[mike_malone]

Smoothing with your feet is a long lost skill from my childhood brought back.

[Niall C]

Why not play the ball as it lies ? Radical I know, but what the hell, there's a pandemic on !!


Seriously though, am I the only one who can remember when smoothing the sand with your foot or the back of the clubhead was the norm ?


Niall

[Thomas Dai]

What’s next, part II ... playing sand bunkers shots from a high tee peg!
Atb

[Niall C]

David


I'm with you. If there is anywhere on the course that there should be a randomness in lie and stance then surely it should be in a bunker ? With the stance in particular, I recall a conversation a couple of years ago with a well known former greenkeeper (who you and I have both met  ) who had a right guid rant about the bunkers he saw week in week out on the tour because the sand was so hard the ball always rolled back away from the face to a level lie. If he had his way I don't think he'd be pampering Sergio and Patrick the same way AG wants to.


Niall

[Pete_Pittock]

Smoothing with your feet is a long lost skill from my childhood brought back.

I agree, but t[/size]hat only works with reasonably firm sand.  Hard to achieve when the footprint is more than 1" deep in soft sand.