[Phil Benedict]

I was looking at the "In My Opinion" on the Philly Cricket Club and was astonished by the number of bunkers that have disappeared from the course, some of which were quite striking.  How does that happen?  Cumulative effect of years of neglect or some affirmative decision to fill in the bunkers and plant grass?  Why does it happen?  To save money?  Changing architectural standards (ie the greens committee or whomever decided they didn't like the bunkers? 

[Ken Moum]

A course I played for more than 20 years, that was built in the 1960s, had something like 70 bunkers in the original aerial photos.

It was a country club. It went broke.

The local Elks Club took it over. It almost broke them.

The city leased it.

When I moved there in the mid-70s, some of the bunkers had already been grassed over, and all the rest had weeds as tall as three feet growing in them.

The city then bought the course, and tried to put it back in playable shape. One of the things they did was fill all but two of the bunkers.

Today, it's been renovated to some extent, and has more bunkers.

IIRC, a lot of old courses lost their bunkers during WWII.

Ken

[Joel_Stewart]

There are a million reasons, each club has different reasons.  You can add to the list but in my expereince its been;

1:  President of club or greens committee chairman didn't like it.
2. Superintendent doesn't like it:
2a. Difficult to maintain
3. A new architect comes in for renovations
4.  Member complaints
5. Club trying to save money
6. Blind bunkers are often eliminated

[TEPaul]

"I was looking at the "In My Opinion" on the Philly Cricket Club and was astonished by the number of bunkers that have disappeared from the course, some of which were quite striking.  How does that happen?  Cumulative effect of years of neglect or some affirmative decision to fill in the bunkers and plant grass?  Why does it happen?  To save money?  Changing architectural standards (ie the greens committee or whomever decided they didn't like the bunkers?"

Phil:

All of those things, and it is incredibly historically provable. There is no question about it---none!

However, we really are in an age of architectural renaissance of the old stuff (a restoration cycle or even craze). But despite that when some of these golf clubs hear how much it costs to both restore and also maintain all those bunkers they do tend to blanch. Believe me, I know. I've been through it and the discussion and decision making is burned in my mind.

It goes something like this Phil:

A master plan or restoration committee member will ask something like this of the project architect:

"What does it cost to restore one of those bunkers?"

Architect:

"It costs $5,000-$8,000 to restore each one of them sir."

What would you say if you were on one of those Master plan or restoration committees, Phil?

Believe me, in an ideal world I'm all for the opinions of dreamy purists like Tom MacWood when he criticizes the lack of purity of some restorations but I am not at all for his opinions when it comes to the question of reality and either his inability or unwillingness to deal with that! 

It's easy for someone from some other state who's never even been there to be architecturally critical of restorations but it's another matter altogether if he's there and has to get involved in the decision of who is going to pay for it.

Do we need those unrealistic purist opinions of a guy like MacWood? Sure we probably do as an example of some ideal. But no club can escape the realities unless they have money to burn.

[Bradley Anderson]

Bunkers have never really been in the purview of the average grounds department's care. And so every twenty years or so, after bunkers wore out, clubs went to outside contractors to renovate, rebuild, restore, or remodel. Whichever R word you use, it was costly and perhaps that is why it was so easy to eliminate those bunkers. But if those grounds crews would have worked every fall at restoring four or five bunkers, most of those clubs might have been able to keep up their bunkers and in good shape from year to year.

I think all of this stems from the false notion that bunkers last a long time, when in fact they have a very short shelf life, particularly if they are flashed.

[Adam Clayman]

I'm under the impression that bunkers have a propensity for acquiring surrounding soil. This helps degrade the bunker sand and will eventually shrink the bunker as plant life invades the old bunker space. Eventually resulting in the loss of the bunker.

How'd I do?

[Phil Benedict]

I'm under the impression that bunkers have a propensity for acquiring surrounding soil. This helps degrade the bunker sand and will eventually shrink the bunker as plant life invades the old bunker space. Eventually resulting in the loss of the bunker.

How'd I do?

I think this is a great post because I was interested in both the physical process of bunker disappearance as well as the decision making.  That is, unless you totally made this up. 

Arguably, the disappearance of bunkers and growth of trees are the single most important developments on classic era golf courses in the last 60 years or so.  Philly Cricket has them both in spades.

[Bradley Anderson]

Adam Clayman said:

"I'm under the impression that bunkers have a propensity for acquiring surrounding soil. This helps degrade the bunker sand and will eventually shrink the bunker as plant life invades the old bunker space. Eventually resulting in the loss of the bunker."

Sometimes on an old golf course you will encounter a depression in the rough that was formerly a bunker. The amazing thing about those relics is they probably were never actually seeded or sodded over. More often as not the club just quite edging those bunkers and the bluegrass grew in over them in five years or less.

[tomgoutman]

Bunkers disappear for any number of reasons, but the principle reasons I've encountered are (1) members think a particular bunker is unfair; (2) members think a particular bunker is not sufficiently in play to warrant the expense of maintaining it; (3) bunkers are swallowed up by improvidently planted trees/tree lines; (4) members retain an imbecile to do course restoration/renovation work who carelessly departs from the designer's intentions and imposes his own "modern" views of couse design.

[michael j fay]

Bunkers disappear becaue of two things maintenence and stupity.

Great example: Shinnecossett Golf Club, Groton, CT.

Built by Donald Ross in 1916-19, it had 189 bunkers. Attached to a very classy (for its time) seaside hotel Hosted a very early PGA event, the Shoreline Open won by both Sarazen and Hagan in the 19teens.

Hotel burned down. Depression hit hard and everything was upside down. Cost $ 16.00 per year to maintain one bunker in 1931. Between 1931 and 1959 over 100 bunkers disappeared. 28 years for 61 % of the bunkers.

Municipal golf course, renovated to suit the needs of the town's biggest employer, it still hosts 50,000+ rounds a year.

The bunkers disappeared for two reasons, economics and renovation.

[Adam Clayman]

Phil, Are you making this shit up about me making this shit up?

 I passed along what little information I have on the subject. With Mr. Anderson somewhat confirming I feel pretty good about it too.

[Joe Hancock]

Bunkers disappear becaue of two things maintenence and stupity.

I live for this kind of quote......

If it wasn't for a stubborn allegiance to Dan Kelly quotes, this would be on the bottom of every one of my posts....until the next funny quote came along.......

Joe

[TEPaul]

When it comes to things like bunker disappearance, fairway narrowing, tree encroachment etc, although I think I posted it before I once had this interesting conversation with Bill Coore.

We were talking about restorations and he was telling me how the dynamics with clubs when a restoration is presented to them is always basically the same. The first bone of contention is removing trees and then they start to fight about the "easier/harder" equation of fairway or even green expansion and even a firm and fast program.

He said he and Ben had gotten clobbered at some big meeting of a restoration somewhere in Texas and because of that they agreed they really didn't want to get into restoration anymore.

But again, he said club to club the politics is remarkably similar in the things memberships argue about. When I asked him why that was he just said:

"Maybe because most all these American courses got screwed up in just about the same ways."

I think that's a wise take on the evolution of American architecture but if it's true it certainly would seem to point to fairly consistent reasons why things happened the same way.

[RSLivingston_III]

Well, I have an article from the early 40's about a local Ross course being taken public. The new owner brags about his new triple gang mowers and how he is getting rid of all the fairway bunkers to simplify the task of mowing.

[TEPaul]

It's probably time to ask if anyone on here considers that perhaps some courses just didn't need all the bunkers they once had. Perhaps it's time to ask if anyone on here has any concerns for golf clubs that may've struggled financially who may not have wanted the maintenance cost of excessive bunkers. Perhaps it's time to ask if most on here feel that the more bunkers a course has in some way correlates to the quality of the course's architecture. We should be reminded that apparently ANGC was originally designed with app 22 bunkers on the golf course. 

[R_Paulis]

Ask the men's club at Soule Park in Ojai, CA.

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