Why put bunkers in landing area?

[mike_malone]

Bunkers only affect a small number of players. They require maintenance. Why not just have grass options to affect everyone?

[Steve Lang]

    Who are you playing golf with???

[Mark_Fine]

Come on Mike, you know the answer.  Why put any kind of hazards anywhere?  Why put water anywhere on any course as it just leads to the loss of expensive golf balls with no chance of recovery.  Why put trees anywhere on any course because they just out compete with the grass, block views (and shots) and clutter the course with needles or leaves,..  Why let the grass grow high to the point where balls nestle down or even sometimes get lost and recovery is difficult or iffy at best?  Why not just have a flat field with a flat green and a 12" hole?  You know the answer 

[Tom_Doak]

Bunkers only affect a small number of players. They require maintenance. Why not just have grass options to affect everyone?

Perry Maxwell typically built very few fairway bunkers, and hardly anyone ever makes note of it. 
    [need that little thinking man emoji here]


I am not sure though what you mean by "grass options".  Grass bunkers are a weird form to me, unnatural and unnecessary.  Just stop the short grass where you want it to stop, and start the rough, you don't need to dig a hole.

[mike_malone]

The original bunkers made by sheep and rabbits I understand. Somehow we thought an inland course needed bunkers to be a golf course.


  Trey Kemp does a great job with his daily aerial of courses.  All I see is unnecessary white everywhere. 

[Joe Hancock]

Compelling tee shots only exist when there is good reason to choose a specific place to be after your ball stops moving. Be it a land form, a tree, a hazard, or an angle to the pin, there has to be something or else the interest wanes.


Site specifics, architects preferences and climate/ soils all have something to do with it.


Then, putting esoteric reasons aside, there’s photography.......(insert emoji of your choosing)

[mike_malone]

I do like Flynn’s idea(surprise) that they should be a problem or provide a mode of play.  This requires the visual to be most important and there is no need to ever move them .

[Thomas Dai]

Having no features in the eye-line from the tee can often be very disconcerting ..... “yikes, where do I aim?”
Sandy bunkers do look nice in photos though and looks seem to be more and more important as the years pass.
Atb

[mike_malone]

Why not paint the grass as bunkers?  Then you can move them at will.

[Peter Pallotta]

Joe -
There's that hole at The Mines, the Par 4 with the high ridge that cuts across the fairway diagonally, from left to right: aiming right off the tee gives you the best angle into the green but requires the longest carry over the ridge (lest you find yourself, as I did, with an uphill second from below the ridge line), while the carry on the left side is much shorter but leaves an awkward approach shot.

Perfecto!

Elegant simplicity!

Lay of the land routing!

And, if memory serves, nary a fairway bunker in sight.

Not to deny/argue against your post, because I can see the validity -- but just to support Mike in a thread that challenges all consensus opinion and conventional wisdom, my favourite kind!

[mike_malone]

The use of natural features or hazards is the height of architecture. The imposition of features is the opposite.

[Joe Hancock]

The use of natural features or hazards is the height of architecture. The imposition of features is the opposite.

Or, “The use of natural features is the height of routing”, while “The *interesting* imposition of features is the height or architecture”.....(stated more as a question, less as a matter of fact, as your statement seems to imply)

[Matt Kardash]

The use of natural features or hazards is the height of architecture. The imposition of features is the opposite.

I'd like to see you design a course in Florida on a dead-flat site!

[Sean_A]

Bunkers only affect a small number of players. They require maintenance. Why not just have grass options to affect everyone?

Architecture needs all natural and man made features as options for design. It's the balance of these options which speaks most intelligently and affords the most variety.

I have been railing against the almost single minded use of bunkers for 15 years. Glad to see you have caught up .

Happy Hockey

[Joe Hancock]

Joe -
There's that hole at The Mines, the Par 4 with the high ridge that cuts across the fairway diagonally, from left to right: aiming right off the tee gives you the best angle into the green but requires the longest carry over the ridge (lest you find yourself, as I did, with an uphill second from below the ridge line), while the carry on the left side is much shorter but leaves an awkward approach shot.

Perfecto!

Elegant simplicity!

Lay of the land routing!

And, if memory serves, nary a fairway bunker in sight.

Not to deny/argue against your post, because I can see the validity -- but just to support Mike in a thread that challenges all consensus opinion and conventional wisdom, my favourite kind!

Hi Peter,


That visit seems ages ago! Bunkerless holes at the Mines GC include #’s 1,3,4,10 and 18. I’ll try to guess which hole you’re mis-remembering! Happy New Year!

[mike_malone]

The use of natural features or hazards is the height of architecture. The imposition of features is the opposite.

I'd like to see you design a course in Florida on a dead-flat site!

That’s where it is most often abused. Water, bunkers, and trees are everywhere.

[Jim_Coleman]

   Mayday believes, to the bottom of his heart, that no matter where one hits a tee shot, he should ALWAYS have a direct and playable shot to the green. 

[Mark_Fine]

Sean,
You have been arguing about the over use of bunkers for 15 years and I have been arguing about the need for balance in the use of design features (the overuse of any one kind of design feature is generally not good). 


Flynn was, I hate to say this, a bit of a fairness guy.  He didn't like blind hazards but he also was one of the few Golden Age architects to never travel across the pond to see and study the great links courses of the British Isles.  It is one of the reasons Flynn used trees as much as any architect in his designs.  Flynn's quote about trees sums it up, "It is impossible to conceive that the "Canny Scots" would have denuded their courses of trees if there had been any there originally.  As a race they are entirely too thrifty for any such waste as that." 


I will say though that it is hard for many golfers (at least over here in the U.S.) to realize that not every hole (especially inland/parkland courses), don't need to have a bunker on them.  I am dealing with that now on a renovation where I think one particular hole would be much more interesting without any.  It is a hard concept to get across.  The hole would have other types of problems to solve that in this case would be more interesting and effective than a bunker.  Again, it is the overuse of a certain feature that is generally the problem.   

[mike_malone]

Mark,


  The more realistic idea is what you just said there. I was just trying to suggest that fairway bunkers are usually not necessary on inland courses.

[mike_malone]

   Mayday believes, to the bottom of his heart, that no matter where one hits a tee shot, he should ALWAYS have a direct and playable shot to the green.

Mr.Coleman,


That’s pretty close to my view on a course where the green complexes challenge offline approaches.

[Mark_Fine]

Mike,
There are lots of architects that think this way but one of the aspects I always liked of a Pete Dye designed golf course is that rarely do you get a shot of any kind that you don't have to think about.  There is always something out there that requires some decision and proper execution.  Sometimes Pete's problems are simple and sometimes they are more complex.  At times I think he over designed some holes but very rarely do I find many boring ones on a Pete Dye layout.  And Pete used all kinds of hazards, formal and informal, to create that interest. 

[mike_malone]

Mark,


I recall a comment on this site once that struck me. “A lot of thought went into the design of the hole”.  That makes me nervous when we are dealing with nature and the randomness of golf. I believe that the hole should reveal itself not be thought out.

[Carl Rogers]

No mention of the tee box location (s) for the golfers of various abilities?  Context?

[Andrew Harvie]

What is golf without obstacles to overcome?

[archie_struthers]

 


This will get somebody laughing but Mayday gave me the best set-up ever.   


I am a huge Flynn fan, he might be my favorite deceased architect. But that bunker in landing area on the 14th at Philly CC (left side) should immediately be expunged for many reasons!


Happy new year all !