"Do you have any answers you'd like to propose. Seems to me that bunkers are a basic part of the course designer's palette. Have they not always been so, since the beginning of formal course design. Even in the Golden Age, did they not build the courses and then add the bunkers as they saw how the course played?"
Bryan:
Yes I certainly do while always recognizing it may not be technically provable.
First of all, I believe by the time the so-called "Golden Age" rolled around (even going all the way back to around the turn of the century) I believe sand bunkering was generally very standard in golf architecture.
What I'm really talking about is some of those very early American courses (1890s) and particularly some of the INLAND GB courses when golf and architecture first began to emigrate out of Scotland (as early as the 1850s and 1860 and for the next couple of decades).
During that time (latter half of the 19th century) the production of those rudimentary INLAND courses actually began to exceed the number of courses in Scotland itself.
My own feeling is that there simply eventually came a time where some of the architects of that early time looked back on the accumulation of that type of rudimentary INLAND type course that was sometimes referred to as "Dark Age" or "Steeplechase" architecture and generally had no sand bunkering of the type we consider bunkering (or Scotland did) and then just said to themselves at that point; "We can definitely do better in the future than all that accumulation of CRAP!").
This is really no different than Macdonald's famous remark in the first decade of the 20th century in America when he looked at on the landscape of what we had over here and said; "It makes the very soul of golf shriek."
I just think at that point when they finally decided they could not only do better but that it was also going to cost a lot more than they had been spending to create those early 19th century courses, essentially the way they went about it was to begin to cast their eyes and minds back towards the originally natural linksland and their natural features including natural sand bunkering (which were never really made by man in the first place) and they said to themselves; "We are going to have to actually begin to make those types of features INLAND that were given to the linksland by Nature."
I think THAT was when the type of sand bunkering most of golf came to expect (and not those things that looked like transitioned "steeplechase" jumps) really began to be a total staple in golf course architecture and I think some of the general things that the Scots said back then not just embarrassed those INLAND architects but motivated them to do better in the future by replicating natural looking linksland sand bunkers. Things most of the Scot linksmen said like that prevalent old linksland saw or knock on INLAND architecture such as "Nae Links, Nae Golf."
I'm sure I don't have to remind you that to the Scots back then "links" golf was almost completely synonymous with "seaside" golf with its naturally occuring sand soil and natural sand type so-called bunkering.
I have always felt, Bryan, that hardly anyone today really appreciates the vast differences to those people back then between seaside (links) golf and architecture and the incipient INLAND golf and architecture of that time. To most of us today it's just all become GOLF and GOLF ARCHITECTURE but to some of them back then (the latter half of the 19th century) the differences between the two was about as different as night is to day!
My point is both why and how they finally decided to do something about trying to bring the two closer together within architecture. I believe the entire history of sand bunkering in architecture is intimately wrapped up in this evolution of linksland vs INLAND and eventually linksland features to inland features, and I think it's the reason sand bunkering became almost a total staple in golf architecture everywhere.
Or perhaps looked at in the converse----eg if for some odd reason early linksland (seaside) golf had never had the natural sand bunkering it did (even pre-man made architecture) I doubt golf would either today anywhere in the world.