Sentinel Baunkers

[Bill Gayne]

I've heard the term "sentinel bunkers" used to describe bunkers on links courses in the UK and Ireland. However, I've never heard the term used to describe bunkers on parkland courses. Do parkland courses have sentinel bunkers and if so why aren't they referred to as sentinel bunkers? What would be an example of a parkland course that has sentinel bunkers?

[Mark_Fine]

Billg,
Not sure what your own definition of a sentinel bunker is but a sentinel is something that guards.  Flynn for example, described his bunkers in this way:

“…Hazards should be plainly visible,… a concealed bunker has no place on a golf course,…when concealed it does not register on the player’s mind as he is about to play the shot and thus loses its value,…the best looking bunkers are those gouged out of the faces of slopes, especially when the slope faces the player,…they are much more effective in that they stand there like sentinels beckoning the player”

Flynn never traveled to Europe so he never saw any of the great links courses.  

For what its worth,
Mark

[TEPaul]

billg;

My sense is that Mark Fine has explained one of the definitions or ideas about what "sentinel" meant back then when it was mentioned by those such as Flynn. The idea of the sentinel was something that beckoned or directed (a lighthouse as a sentinel for a ship, for instance, or a bunker in golf) a ship or a golfer to come near but to take care as they did (danger from rocks in shipping or penality in golf).

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mark Fine,

That's an interesting comment by Flynn.

Perhaps it represents the genesis of the trend toward "fairness" in American golf.

I rarely disagree with the good TEPaul,  , but, I think Mark's definition is more accurate then TEPaul's who may be refering to bunkers that signal, rather then guard, which is what I think Sentinel bunkers do.

I don't want to divert the thread, but did Flynn ever build any bunkers, fairway or greenside thet were hidden ?

[TEPaul]

"I don't want to divert the thread, but did Flynn ever build any bunkers, fairway or greenside thet were hidden?"

Pat:

Flynn did write that wasn't a good thing to do architecturally and frankly we've really never seen original bunkering on any of his courses that was hidden or at least hidden from spots that the golfer might be expected by Flynn to be.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul & Mark Fine,

I seem to remember a slight dog-leg right at Lehigh, perhaps the 5th hole, where the bunkers may have been hidden off the tee, or perhaps it was the fairway line.  Could you address those bunkers and their relative visibility, thanks.

[Mark_Fine]

Pat,
Those bunkers on #5 on the corner are visible.  I'm hard pressed to think of blind bunkers that Flynn did.  Though I'm sure there are exceptions, I generally tell people if you have blind bunkers on your Flynn course, there is a good chance they were added by someone else.  

Also keep in mind the definition of blind.  A bunker might become blind if a poor shot is played or the golfer fails to reach the intended landing area or preferred angle of approach that the architect intended.
Mark

[Bill Gayne]

Mark, Pat, and TEPaul,

Thanks for the replies. From your responses sentinel bunkers are not unique to links courses. When I hear current day discussion and literature, the usage of the term seems to always be related to a links course. Clearly sentinel bunkers are used in the strategic school of design as either a beacon to direct or to guard. Do sentinel bunkers have a place in the penal school of design as exclusively guarding bunkers?

[Patrick_Mucci]

billg,

If they don't guard, don't they lose their definition ?

[Steve Lang]

 

We have two sentinel bunkers on the WCC's Player Course #16, a dogleg right par five.. they are carved into a hillside, guarding against a slight downhill run-up approach to a potentially reachable in two type par 5..  one is coffin like and you see the very steep side slopes very clearly, and know whats at the bottom.. its buddy is immediately adjacent downslope and is more like a pot bunker, they guard the direct routes to the small pod green.. from the left and center fairway drive..

got to hit over this hill on the left side of the fairway to get to the green or thread it around them and avoid a longish bunker on the right flank of the green..

for most its a love hate relationship..

[Doug Siebert]

Mark Fine,

That's an interesting comment by Flynn.

Perhaps it represents the genesis of the trend toward "fairness" in American golf.

Patrick, I think you are misreading Flynn's comments there.  Flynn was only saying that what you can't see can't affect your shot (either increasing your uncertainty or giving you something to base your aim on)  He wasn't saying anything about a hidden bunker being unfair, just that it served no purpose in his mind because you didn't play your shot differently because of it.

I think anyone who has played one of the many linksland courses with hidden pot bunkers knows this to be untrue, except for the case where you play the hole for the first time, without the aid of a caddie, knowledgeable fellow golfer or strokesaver.

Reminds me of the first time I played Carnoustie, I was swinging pretty badly on the front nine, and on one hole a massive duck hook left me in a hidden pot bunker.  My caddie hadn't mentioned it off the tee, and I asked him why he didn't point it out, and he said "I've never seen anyone hit into this bunker on this hole, sir".  Can't remember which hole, the back nine was far more memorable that day

[Bill Gayne]

Pat,

I agree. My original line of thought was that you could have a sentinel bunker that would indicate (directional) a preferred line of play rather than guarding. However, I failed to consider by not taking the preferred line of play there would be some type of cost that would need to be overcome.

Going back to  TEPaul's nautical analogy, when sailing there are midchannel bouys that indicate safe passage to the left or right. Once the buoy is passed the ending point is always the same. (The Annapolis Book of Seamanship actually refers to these buoys as "Fairway Buoys.") Much the same as you would have a sentinel fairway bunker leading to divergent strategies and ending at the hole.

Yes sentinel bunkers must be both directional and guarding. My original thought that they could be either directional or guarding wasn't logical.

 

[Patrick_Mucci]

Doug Siebert,

I don't think I'm misreading Flynn.

The NEED for visibility brings with it the element of fairness.  The two are intricately connected.

billg,

Some say that A function of a bunker is to send a tactical signal to the eye.

I think certain bunkers serve to guard and others serve to signal and some do both.

[Mark_Fine]

Pat,
Just remember Flynn never saw the courses in the British Isles.  How not seeing those great courses first hand influenced him, we will never know.  I'm sure he talked about them, however, with Wilson in particular.  

Furthermore, I wouldn't say Flynn was an advocate of "fairness".  The word doesn't appear too much in his writings that I can recall.  Visible features do play on someone's mind more so than features that are hidden.  I'm not sure you can derive a "fairness" conclusion out of that.
Mark  

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mark Fine,

The NEED for visibility connotes the element of fairness.

[TEPaul]

Mark Fine said;

"Furthermore, I wouldn't say Flynn was an advocate of "fairness".  The word doesn't appear too much in his writings that I can recall."

I wouldn't say Flynn was a real advocate of fairness either, certainly not in the sense some think of "fairness" today, perhaps the most extreme example and cliche we hear today being;

"Everything should be right in front of you."

Clearly, Flynn felt that bunkering, however, should be visible. Frankly, he generally felt it should be more than just visible, he felt it should be extremely visible in the sense of perhaps almost intimidating the golfer. It's my sense that Flynn definitely picked up this extremely visible bunker principle from Merion East. It's believed that Hugh Wilson was an early advocate of extremely visible flashed sand bunkering ("White faces of Merion").

Flynn and Wilson got into what had become known in America in the teens and 1920s as "scientific architecture". Tillinghast was also and advocate of that.

In my opinion, Flynn used highly visible bunkering frequently to hide the visibility of safe areas such as fairway areas or ideal fairway areas. The best of his architecture shows this technique clearly. The best examples being on the;

10th hole of Lehigh
6th and 8th at Shinnecock
a number of holes of Indian Creek
8th and 9th Philly C.C.
And numerous others


 

[Mark_Fine]

Good points Tom.  We are both on the same page here.  I agree with what you are saying about Tillinghast as well.  

Again, the are always exceptions but architects have tendencies and they stick to them often.
Mark

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mark Fine, TEPaul and WSMorrison,

I ask again, could Flynn's quest for a high degree of visibility be the genesis of the movement toward fairness in American Golf course design ?

[T_MacWood]

TE
Scientific architecture and scientific trapping predates both Flynn and Tillinghast...James Braid and others wrote about it in the early 1900's...Hutchinson warned of becoming too scientific.

[Doug Siebert]

Patrick, I think you are assuming cause and effect.  I'm sure most anyone would agree that hidden bunkers are incompatible with many people's ideas of "fairness".  But from that one cannot infer that a requirement for visible bunkers means all the remaining part and parcel of "fairness" must come along with it.

There are many possible holes where everything is visible but it isn't "fair".  Just create a shallow hard green that falls away from the golfer and stick a bunker in front, or heck just a bunch of small mowed mounds that cause the required ground shot to bounce totally randomly.  I'm sure people can come up with plenty of examples here, but not everyone would agree....some people have said here in GCA they feel the approach to Jubilee's 15th is unfair, I wouldn't agree with that but to coin a phrase I guess fairness is in the eye of the golfer.  Even if you don't believe in fairness as a requirement or something desireable you certainly know it by its absence.

[TEPaul]

Tom MacWood said;

"TE
Scientific architecture and scientific trapping predates both Flynn and Tillinghast...James Braid and others wrote about it in the early 1900s.......Hutchinson warned of becoming too scientific. "

Tom:

Perhaps you might find some quotes or pieces of what specifically they were talking about and certainly Huthinson's warning.

I guess one might make a case that the early "geometric" designs were "scientific" in a sense too but certainly not something many seemed to like--just the opposite in fact. The question of the "science" of geometric architecture would probably be who was it scientific for (only the "crack" golfer?)?

Tillinghast eludes to what I believe was referred to by some as "scientific" architecture but Tillinghast mostly refers to it as new and American "modern" architectural principles that was as good or better than most of what was being done in Europe (or England) around the time of WW1.

What I'm referring to here is what's found from Tillinghast in his response to a general criticism of American architecture in 1917 by England's JH Taylor. Tillinghast is basically reacting to Taylor's general criticism of American architecture as too hard based on what he'd heard about NGLA. One of Tillinghast's criticisms of Taylor's criticism of American architecture was that Taylor had not even been to the USA in a number of years and was critiquing American architecture generally on hearsay as well as the fact that Taylor seemed to be critical of a course (NGLA) that was certainly not representative of American architecture of that time generally! Tillinghast's implication was that Taylor was inferring that all American architectural principles were becoming too hard only on the strength of one or two new courses that were basically designed for the "crack" golfer only (NGLA & PVGC?).

But perhaps another take on what was meant by "scientific" (or "modern") architecture in the early 1920s comes from A. Linde Fowler, a well known Boston sports writer from the Boston Evening Transcript, Oct.11,1924 in his article on the new Kittansett course designed by Wilson and Flynn with noticeable similarities to the modern or scientific feature arrangements of Merion East (the early 1920 redesign of Merion East) which had architectural problems and solutions for all golfers not just good ones.

It's interesting to note that when both Fowler and Tillinghast write about this new ("modern" or "scientific") American architecture they both speak about it in the context that architecture in the future needs to consider the "dub" more (as opposed to only considering the "crack" golfer) in its design as ultimately they're of greater numbers amongst memberships and so consequently they're the ones who pay the bills!

What exactly were the feature arrangements that were being referred to here as "modern" or "scientific"? In a general sense it appears to me they were referring mostly to the increased use in America of the progressive "diagonal" (water, bunkering, mounds etc) where any golfer could intelligently try to handle whatever he felt he was capable of!

[T_MacWood]

It was a common term....used a lot on both sides of the pond.

[wsmorrison]

I think that American golf architecture starting with the National and up till the early 30s was into some new and different ideas based upon the natural look of links courses in Scotland but also on the efforts of Colt and others in the heathlands around London-- modern or scientific designs if you will.  

Not just the designs but in the way golf courses were constructed and priced.  Engineers were partnering with designers and in the case of Flynn and his engineer Howard Toomey, they were following the principals of time management and efficiency that Taylor (not the Br player and architect--Tom Paul, what was his name--Frederick?).  Flynn knew, after building hundreds of greens on all kinds of different terrains, the average cost of a green on a given type of terrain and priced his contracts based upon this.

Flynn developed a style of using natural lines even on sites that required significant engineering (Cascades, Indian Creek, etc.).  He knew this cost more money to build initially due to the increased fill and time to build natural lines around man-made features.  He and Toomey devised a scheme to address the added cost and knew it in advance to inform clients.  The move away from the geometric in America and to a naturalism was a much more appealing look and was cheaper to maintain in the long run, also proven by Flynn and Toomey's studies.

As far as designs, it is simplistic to think that Flynn ushered in the principal of fairness in golf because he had a propensity to use flashed bunkers and didn't often employ concealed bunkers.  I agree with Tom and Tom that it was happening elsewhere and before Flynn.  

Flynn also was an early an often user of multiple tees as well...this is probably a stronger case for your argument, Pat.

What was considered modern were concepts such as interrupted fairways such as those at Pine Valley.  Flynn used these on many of the courses he designed in the early to mid 20s such as Kittansett (still there to this day), Yorktown CC where they were advertised as of the modern style, Cherry Hills, Denver CC, Atlantic City CC, Boca Raton, Opa Locka, and others.  A more sophisticated use of wind, courses within courses, and reversible courses are all examples of the American design principals that Flynn was employing.

[T_MacWood]

Wayne
If American golf architecture was into some new and different ideas based upon Scotland and Colt (heathland), then how are they new and different?

Regarding the pairing with engineers...thats the first I've heard of that common practice. I was under the impression the seed merchants were active in construction (on both sides of the Atlantic). What was the background of McGovern and Hatch?

One of the early advocates of multiple tees was Travis at GCGC (before 1910).....and I believe the idea predates him.

It is ironic that Tillinghast would eventually collaborate with Taylor's former associate Peter Lees on a number of projects.

It is also ironic that Tillinghast (and evidently Crump and Wilson) was enthralled with the humps and bumps of Mid Surrey (Taylor and Lees) early in his design career.

[wsmorrison]

Tom,

Are you saying something that is based upon previous work cannot be new and different?  Does everything new and different have to be wholly original?  That is a definition I am not accustomed to.  Are the computers of today not new and different from the ENIAC?

I didn't say that it was a common practice for engineers to pair up with designers, I simply said, or meant, that it was coming into practice in whatever scale.

I didn't say nor mean to imply that Flynn was the originator of multiple tees.  I do mean that he used them relatively early and certainly early in his career (late teens) and it became a universal feature of his designs.

Why is it ironic that Tillinghast would collaborate with Frederick Taylor's former associate, Peter Lees?  I wasn't aware they had collaborated.  Both Tillinghast and Lees independently studied the property where the Cascades course was eventually built and each determined that it was ground unsuitable for a golf course.  I am not familiar enough with other architects to know why you find it ironic.

I have not concluded this yet but I think the humps and bumps at Merion have more to do with Fred Pickering than they do with Hugh Wilson.  Not long after these were removed by Wilson and Flynn.  Tom, if you like, message me off line and I will send you info on this.