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Bunkerless holes-how many?


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My course has 4 holes without bunkers, it's 100 years old but has been renovated over the years. Almost every hole without a bunker has a pretty severe green or green complex.

 

#4- Reachable par 5 with fairway sloping hard right to left into a hazard and green sloping both right to left and front to back making it extremely hard to hold on the approach.

 

#12- Par 4 with hazards left and right off the tee and a long, narrow green with mounds on either side that can kick balls away. The approach is blind.

 

#14- The same as #12 but tighter and 40 yards shorter.

 

#16- Dogleg left with a ravine at hazard at 250 yards off the tee. Green is cut into the side of a hill, missing above can kick the ball on the green but missing below is in the hazard.

 

All of these holes feature hazards as deterrents for poor shots and also face dramatically sloping green complexes (and greens for 4 and 16). Bunkers would help tee shots from running into hazards but would remove options around the greens as the mounds are usually pretty tightly cut so a variety of shots can be played. 3 of these 4 holes are some of the toughest on the course and I wouldn't modify them.

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All of the holes at my home course have bunkers. They have started filling a bunch of them in though. I can think of at least 4 bunkers that were filled in with sod later in the season, which I think will make it 1 bunkerless hole next season. One of them on 17 it looked like they were turning it into a pot bunker. They had a new wall build and still had it torn up around where the rest of the bunker used to be.

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My course has bunkers on every hole but also has several with no fairway bunkers. Water on a handful of holes but to go in would take a poor shot. We have a few dogleg holes that require a decent tee shot (played from the proper tee box) to have open shot to green. Many greens have drop-offs to the rear or the side so hitting greens is critical to avoid difficult recovery shot.

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I think the best designed courses are the ones that put hazards in play to affect the golfers options, not just because. I've played courses with very few bunkers that are just as hard as courses with them scattered everywhere. Grass bunkers, water hazards, mounds, sloping fairways and greens, very large greens, and tree-lined fairways can make for just as much challenge as a bunker shot. Honestly, sand shots don't scare me like they do some. I'd much rather have a bunked lined fairway than a tight-chute type tree-lined tee shot into the wind with water left and OB right. Now that's scary!!!!

 

Yes to this.

 

I seem to recall that a old school Donald Ross course I played in southern Ohio has some holes without sand. It reminded about something I read where Ross wrote he preferred avoiding artificial hazards, and that included putting sand in areas where it didn’t exist naturally. The thing about that course was I realized there were holes without sand bunkers, but a few of them had grass bunkers and I found them tougher than sound bunkers.

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All 18 at my course have bunkers. All the holes except one have bunkers impacting the tee shot. All greens have several bunkers protecting them. However, there is plenty of room opposite the bunkers to hit the fairway and the green for that matter. The bunkers are not put in spots that are unnecessarily penal, but an errant shot will have a good chance of finding trouble. I like the bunkering so one has to be somewhat purposeful with each shot. Not target golf, but avoid one side or the other. With all that said, the course also uses mounds and slopes to increase the challenge as well.

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  • 3 years later...

As labor costs continue to increase, I wonder how many courses will start to remove more and more bunkers to preserve their margin. Having never worked in golf course maintenance or management, I am not aware of exactly how much it costs to maintain bunkers to a sufficient standard but it seems, anecdotally, to be where I see a lot of maintenance workers spending their time. I think fairway bunkers especially on every hole of a golf course are a bit silly and I think waste areas would work equally well (assuming they don't turn to mud every time it rains). Personally, when I play a generic private course and the majority of the par 4s seem to be 400-430 yds with fairway bunkers left and right at 250-280 and then greenside bunkers left and right on repeat it is just bland and lazy. 

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image.png.d3335260a9d34b8d20bfd523f18d042d.png

At my home course, Stonewolf GC: hole #4 is a Par 3 that ranges from 200 to 145 yards in length. It is basically a bunkerless redan green.

 

Green is about 5 feet above tee, so it's rough to run a shot on. Miss to left can leave you hung on hillside, or 10 feet below with a blind uphill shot. Mounding on right provides for interesting wedge shots, and gives some protection to golfers from errant approach shots from adjacent par 5.

 

------------------------------------

 

Normandie Golf Club in St. Louis has a superb bunkerless hole in No. 14, a rollercoaster 398-yard par 4.

 

Starts with a blind tee shot uphill, with a likely approach off the shelf landing area. Underclubbed shots will kick back into swale. The green has a slight terrace - partially to aid drainage - so holding the green on the proper level is necessary for a reasonable chance at a birdie.image.png.472e0cba60bd48c61ba6ff58a0d765e7.png

This appears to be a natural hole. The Foulis team scanned the terrain, put in the tee and green with minor grading in the swale, and had an intriguing Par 4.

Edited by ChipNRun
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The Preserve at Eisenhower (Maryland) was re-designed without any bunkers on the entire course. Off the top of my head the only other well known course that has no bunkers is Sheep Ranch at Bandon. Could be a growing practice? Anyway, see below for The Preserve and how it presents on Google Earth:

 

image.png.a7a40a59aed39a0b4e8df65fd5470cc8.png

 

And then at my local muni, there are a number of holes that have no bunkers but probably the most notable is number 3 on the middle 9 which is 436 yds up and over a hill in the middle of the fairway, tree lined with a decently tight landing area (compared to the rest of the course). It is also the longest par 4 out there and while the green is benign it would seem overly penal to have bunkers on what is one of the tighter, definitely longer holes on the golf course. In addition, the fairway tilts left to right about 9 feet which ushers fading balls into the trees right (for a right hander). This course is generally pretty easy so this hole already presents a ton of challenge to most of the patrons:

 

image.png.8463b7f660d370393ab6974d3443054c.png

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My home club has 60+ total bunkers and not a single bunkerless hole. Even with all those I can really only think of 1 bunker that doesn't come into play.

 

I do think they could remove about 20% of those (especially some of the greenside ones) and not compromise the integrity or the difficulty of the golf course. 

Edited by Abh159
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We have one at my course. The par 3 17th hole. From the back tees it measures roughly 196 to a front pin, and 205 to a back. No middle pin position due to a severe two tier green. Plays an additional 15 yards due to the slope up to the green. A bunker or two may make it easier as the slope in the bunkers wouldn’t be as severe as in the rough off the sides of the green. 

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Bunkers cost $ to maintain but compared to other parts of a course the cost is minimal. If you look at it daily it takes 1 guy 2 - 3 hours depending on what we are doing (spinning the bottoms vs a full rake). Add is a full detail every other week (3 or 4 guys 4-6 hours depending on condition of the bunkers). Last is adding sand which we do twice a year and 2 loads gets us through a year. 
 

Honestly when you add in chemicals for the rest of the course it doesn’t even compare. 
 

Now a different point of view but not all bunkers are created equal. While upon 1st view bunkers are hazards, that’s not really the case. We have 32 bunkers, of those 6 or 7 are actually designed to catch balls and keep them from going OB. There is another 4 that are there to break up the green and provide aiming points. Just something to thing about. 

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Every single hole at my home club has at least two bunkers around the green. 

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Every hole at my local course has a bunker. One of them is a shared bunker between two holes, but I’ve been in said bunker on both holes on multiple different occasions. 

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Crystal Falls Golf Club Here in the Austin area has no bunkers.   Has some big elevation changes on a couple of the par 3s and several par 4s, and water on several holes.   Many of the fairways are tight with severe run offs to punish off line tee shots.   Has some nice views of lots of big houses. 

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9 hours ago, mallrat said:

Bunkers cost $ to maintain but compared to other parts of a course the cost is minimal. If you look at it daily it takes 1 guy 2 - 3 hours depending on what we are doing (spinning the bottoms vs a full rake). Add is a full detail every other week (3 or 4 guys 4-6 hours depending on condition of the bunkers). Last is adding sand which we do twice a year and 2 loads gets us through a year. 

 

Sounds like you have experience here. How often do the bunkers need to get re-faced and re-shaped? Does it depend on climate and the steepness of the faces or is it pretty standard 5-10-15 years kind of thing? I guess I just see some courses that have 3-4 bunkers on every hole which turns into 72 bunkers that need to be maintained and it seems like a bit of a waste. 

9 hours ago, mallrat said:

Honestly when you add in chemicals for the rest of the course it doesn’t even compare. 

 

Sure, but that is unavoidable right? Golf requires grass but not necessarily bunkers. Or at least not 50+ bunkers. And is a pinehurst no. 4 style waste area (I am aware pinehurst no.4 also has standard deep bunkers as well) less expensive to maintain than a typical deep, soft resort bunker?

 

Pinehurst No. 4 waste area:

image.png.95aeff4e773b3f622a3a26e0a2d84fa5.png

 

Typical resort bunkering that seems overdone and wasteful (to me):

 

image.png.6c5762733bfb780f4240714be0891154.png

 

 

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We have 69 bunkers on the course.  Every hole has at least 1.  All but a few are in play for a bogey golfer.  Interestingly enough, one of our hardest holes has 1 bunker (par 4), one of our easiest holes has 7 bunkers (par 5).  

 

3 of the greenside bunkers are auto bogey, regardless of the pin position.

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