Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: Mark Bourgeois on February 14, 2007, 05:33:10 PM
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Several posts on that thread have noted the role wildlife and changes in dune structures played in the origins of bunkers.
I accept this happens, but can't quite accept sheep, rabbits or sandslides as responsible for the strategically-placed bunker.
Bugs Bunny and Sean from Wallace & Gromit excepted, surely rabbits and sheep can't be that smart!
I have considered a better explanation the one put forth by Wethered and Simpson in "The Architectural Side of Golf."
They write the formation of bunkers in the second age of golf, the "Feather Age" (when golf moved off the ice and onto the shores of Scotland), was the product of repeated play to a spot:
"If a ball fell into a difficult lie or reposed on a patch of blown sand, the efforts to dislodge it would have the effect of widening the breach. In the course of time, as other similar misfortunes followed, a broad hazard of a purely natural formation would make its appearance, more cunningly planned probably by nature than in later days by any deliberate forethoughts on the part of the Green Committee."
This argument has the ring of authenticity. It provides a logical explanation for the strategically-placed bunker. It has the added advantage of simplicity, and the simplest answer often is the correct one. Surely the most-mischievous bunkers on our oldest links owe their origins to golfers!
The idea that sheep, rabbits or sandslides would have carved out those bunkers that are strategically placed seems a little far-fetched, unless you accept the "monkeys at a typewriter" argument: there are so many bunkers created that through random chance a few turned out strategic to the play of the hole.
How many bunkers would sheep and rabbits need to create for enough strategic bunkers to be created? Would the course first look like the moon?
Nowhere can I find Wethered and Simpson mention sheep or rabbits in the context of bunkers. (They do refer to sheep and rabbits as "greenkeepers," though.) On the other hand, other than Wethered and Simpson, I can't recall coming across this explanation, which makes me think maybe they're wrong. It's always sheep, sheep, sheep -- and now rabbits!
Any support for the Wethered and Simpson position out there?
Mark
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I am not sure how many bunkers there would have to be initiallyfor some percentage to end up being considered 'strategic' at an older links course.
Really, I am not sure how many bunkers are all that strategic--maybe some where 80 years ago and have lost relevancy as distance has marched on, or some were irrelevant for Braid but relevant for Tiger now.
Or, maybe some that were rarely entered were filled in years ago, and new ones created or old ones moved intentionally as architects have left their mark.
I guess this means I fall in the 'monkeys with typewriters' camp--though I confess there is some logic to Simpson and Weathered's explanation and would not be at all surprised if both were right.
How's that for talking out of both sides of my mouth? ;)
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Mark:
I promise you that I have seen small bunkers made by sheep and rabbits at Westward Ho! in England, and some other common-land courses. But usually the greenkeeper fills them back in as fast as they are made.
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"If a ball fell into a difficult lie or reposed on a patch of blown sand, the efforts to dislodge it would have the effect of widening the breach. In the course of time, as other similar misfortunes followed, a broad hazard of a purely natural formation would make its appearance, more cunningly planned probably by nature than in later days by any deliberate forethoughts on the part of the Green Committee."
Interesting quote Mark and I would agree on it's merits. I just never considered that the sheep and rabbits were starting the holes with methane. ;)
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OK, so Mark has me intrigued with this one. I started hunting online for nice maps of the Old Course and found this for the 3rd hole:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v348/ahughes584/OldCourse_3.gif)
Now, there's lots of bunkers there and I don't remember the course at all well enough, but are many of those 13 bunkers strategic? Or do they seem like spots where players repeatedly ended up--I can easily envision that happening in collection areas. Is that the case here?
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Robert Hunter writes about this in "The Links"
I am told, although it seems a bit incredible, that where divots are not carefully replaced and many such wounded spots are long neglected, a big wind may at times carve out a bunker. It is a tradition that this is what happened at St Andrews and that it explains why many of the sand-traps are on the direct line to the hole.
And
From the point of view of golf course architecture this brings up some interesting questions. Should we select those portions of our fairways where we find the mist divots and cut our bunkers there? Should we place our hazards in those choice positions from which the best golfers would like to play their shots? One would hardly venture to suggest that.
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Mark:
My feeling is back in that time that Wethered and Simpson mentioned golf was in a totally different state than we think of today.
Essentially it was before any kind of man-made architectural planning at all, before any kind of construction, any kind of maintenance, seeding etc.
They did not mow any grass because there was no way to do that. Matter of fact, golf was generally played in the winter because in the summer it grew too long to play effectively.
The grass areas were sort of natural "swards" of solely a hardy form of bent and fescue because those two grasses were about the only grass that could grow in that environment the soil was so acidic. When I say it was hardy that is not to say it was tough enough to always withstand the traffic of golfers and other things---it probably wasn't and was probably torn up pretty easily. Those natural swards (grass areas) were also totally naturally arranged and had nothing to do with any kind of architecturally or golf related "strategy".
All those things obviously contributed to sand areas (bunkers, whatever) from appearing here and there.
For us to think any of that was actually "strategically" planned and executed and purposefully constructed to suit the "strategic" play of golfers would be pretty foolish, in my opinion.
Golf just hadn't gotten to that point in that time and the entire thought and practice of man-made and man-planned architecture was still a long way off.
What golf was back then was something of a form of a "path of least resistance" recreation.
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But isn't it clear (if we are to take this at face value...that bunkers evolved naturally from golfer wear) that bunkers have evolved in the most strategic places? eg...right where the most people hit the ball...
I would think W.C. Fownes would agree with that based on the little I know of how he modified his course over the years...adding bunkers when he saw a player gain an advantage from driving it some place not presently "protected".
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Really interesting thread. Off the TE-JES exchange, it's almost as if it was the random acts of nature that helped to clarify (or bring to consciousness) the still-developing concepts of strategic design for the early architects. If so, it's no wonder that those architects that immediately followed them would have such high regard for what appeared natural in their designs (if that was in fact the case).
Lots of "ifs" - just thinking out loud.
Peter
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So now it's Wethered, Simpson, Hunter v. Wallace & Gromit.
Andy Hughes, one way to check would be to figure which tee was in play and then draw out the length of the average drive of the time.
Tom Paul, interesting to note that a) turf conditions would have allowed gashes to appear rather easily, and b) it was a winter game, presumably the turf could not have recovered as quickly plus the winds would have been higher and more scouring.
An idle conjecture: if modern agronomy preceded the development of the game, would bunkers have existed at all? Or would divots, bunny holes, etc. have been fixed immediately? How might bunkers have developed?
Mark
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But isn't it clear (if we are to take this at face value...that bunkers evolved naturally from golfer wear) that bunkers have evolved in the most strategic places? eg...right where the most people hit the ball...
JES, I don't think it's clear at all. For starters, I am not sure that the place most people may hit the ball on a particular hole has any relation to a strategic location. But I might well misunderstand your meaning there
Also, look at the picture of #3 at the Old Course. There are bunkers to the left and to the right of the fairway--I would have to assume that either one or the other would be considered the 'strategic' side.
In my gut it seems to me that there would be far more bunkers in the fairways themselves rather than the more common flanking bunkers if bunker genesis was golfer divots one after the other were the cause. Or maybe I give golfers too much credit for accuracy ;)
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You just have to think of gathering bunkers on a links course to accept this theory. I remember watching Tiger v Olazabal on the TOC and it was amazing how frequently the two of them would drive to the same hollow on the fairway. Mark did specify 'strategically placed' bunkers in his opening post and it was these ones that occupied the original author’s thoughts. From this I would deduce that some bunkers became famous because of their position and not just their size or depth?
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AHughes,
Can a green not reward an approach from different positions depending on the wind and hole location of the day? I think it can.
Never been to TOC, so cannot speak on #3 more than to say the image you posted looks very much like right edge to right pins and left edge to left pins is very sensible.
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Andy Hughes, one way to check would be to figure which tee was in play and then draw out the length of the average drive of the time.
Mark, if I am following you correctly, then one would also need to know when specific bunkers came into being and disappeared as well. For example, to beat on the map of #3 one more time, there is a string of 3 bunkers up the right edge of the fairway---perhaps they came into being one at a time as players got longer. But if the second or third one existed first, it might put a crimp in this line of thought.
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Might be a way to track climate change as well...as the atmosphere warmed and the the ground firmed, the little pill went further and further...
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Can a green not reward an approach from different positions depending on the wind and hole location of the day? I think it can.
Good point. And I may be wrong about this, but I believe the best approach is almost always from the right side here. But I could well have that wrong
Setting that aside though, I still am struck by the paucity of bunkers generally in the middle of fairways whether the creation was due to animals or ever-growing divot scrapes.
Might be a way to track climate change as well...as the atmosphere warmed and the the ground firmed, the little pill went further and further...
;D
Except we were all so worried about global cooling until a few years ago. Its all so confusing!
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"An idle conjecture: if modern agronomy preceded the development of the game, would bunkers have existed at all? Or would divots, bunny holes, etc. have been fixed immediately? How might bunkers have developed?"
Mark:
Not an idle conjecture at all, even though the answer may be hard to pinpoint.
But I think if it was pinpointed at all it would tell us more of what we need to know and appreciate better----and that is just how little understood the entire evolution of golf and its various components really is. For starters, I doubt one in 1000 appreciates how simple and rudimentary things once were in golf in Scotland.
And the state of golf agronomy in that time and place so long ago is surely part of it, probably a huge part of it. But the fact that one couldn't transport that original Scottish linksland agronomy out of Scotland when golf first migrated out of Scotland hundreds of years after it began there, is an even greater part of understanding the evolution of golf and architecture world-wide.
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Setting that aside though, I still am struck by the paucity of bunkers generally in the middle of fairways whether the creation was due to animals or ever-growing divot scrapes.
That's a good point and I can't think up a simple or elegant explanation other than topography of the ground / no collection areas.
Mark
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And the state of golf agronomy in that time and place so long ago is surely part of it, probably a huge part of it. But the fact that one couldn't transport that original Scottish linksland agronomy out of Scotland when golf first migrated out of Scotland hundreds of years after it began there, is an even greater part of understanding the evolution of golf and architecture world-wide.
Yes! And not just agronomy, but the fact it was a winter game, played in a time and place where winters were cold, dry, and windy. Not simply because there was business to take care of during the growing months, but without dormant turf it would have been a vastly different game, huh?
{Bit of a ramble here: It does give one thought, the spread of the game to parts distant. Given the wide variety of conditions in geographies to which the game spread, how much of the interest in these non-linksland areas is down to things like architecture, and how the game was played on the links, and how much down to other aspects, like the mental challenge? Is there one ideal, like "firm and fast" or "ground game," or is it misguided to attempt that outside the golf equivalent of what the French call "terroir" (climate, soil)?}
And the origins of bunkers are so varied; it can't just be down to sheep and rabbits, there must have been significant interactions / involvement from man. A golf course is not a natural environment, it's a built environment. There's a bunker on the Old Course called "Shell," and Ian Andrew in his blog says the origin of the Road Hole bunker possibly was down to townsfolk digging shells there, and that was close to town. Was there a bunker already there? Ian implies there was, but what form did it take, and who / what started it?
It's in a collection area; could its evolution be down to repeated play, followed by townsfolk, followed by Allan Robertson?
Funny, but the more challenging the provenance the more interesting the story! Today it's just down to, "put a bunker there."
Wouldn't it be interesting to start with a patch of linksland today, cut a few holes, and see what developed?
Mark
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"{Bit of a ramble here: It does give one thought, the spread of the game to parts distant. Given the wide variety of conditions in geographies to which the game spread, how much of the interest in these non-linksland areas is down to things like architecture, and how the game was played on the links, and how much down to other aspects, like the mental challenge? Is there one ideal, like "firm and fast" or "ground game," or is it misguided to attempt that outside the golf equivalent of what the French call "terroir" (climate, soil)?}"
Mark:
i don't understand what you mean here or even what you're asking.
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"And the origins of bunkers are so varied; it can't just be down to sheep and rabbits, there must have been significant interactions / involvement from man. A golf course is not a natural environment, it's a built environment."
Mark:
That depends whether you're talking about the beginnings of golf or the beginnings of man-made golf architecture.
The fact is the one preceded the other by literally hundreds of years. It was not until right about 1850 that man began to really build things in a golf architectural context as we know it and think of it today.
Before that golf was pretty much what Max Behr referred to as "wild" golf---eg golf played in an almost totally natural environement the makeup of which was so unique compared to almost anywhere elsewhere.
The thing that most don't realize about the original linksland is that it was the most remarkable coming together of a number of fascinating and diverse factors not found elsewhere in the same combination and with the same timing.
In a sense it was something like a five-way accident that allowed golf to happen in the first place the way it did in the Scottish linksland.
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The goat, sheep, rabbit and divot theories have always sounded bogus to me.
No bunker is inherently strategic. Bunkers are strategic only in relation to the demands of the preceding or following shots. Which suggests that somebody gave some thought to where the bunkers at TOC ought to be.
It may have been many different people over many generations, but the location of the bunkers at TOC are infomed by human agency.
I mean, gosh, it's possible that a monkey could type long enough to write The Sun Also Rises. But it's only theoretically possible. Things like that don't actually happen.
TOC didn't happen that way either.
Bob
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The thing that most don't realize about the original linksland is that it was the most remarkable coming together of a number of fascinating and diverse factors not found elsewhere in the same combination and with the same timing.
That's what I was getting at, but the thought / question in there isn't worth rescuing. (Life's too short.)
But about bunker origins...I do mean the beginnings of golf, not the beginnings of golf architecture. Isn't that the period Wethered and Simpson are referring to?
As to "wild," it can't be truly wild when you have man (and domesticated animals) tramping over that ground. There's an interaction there, even if it's not wholly structured or "premeditated" in any architectural sense.
That's what I thought Wethered and Simpson were getting at. Golfers created bunkers through repeated play.
To (mis)appropriate Bob's phrase, "informed by human agency."
Mark
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Bob, to clarify for those who can't quite decipher what 'informed by human agency' actually means, are you saying that all the bunkers at the Old Course were created by man?
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Bob, to clarify for those who can't quite decipher what 'informed by human agency' actually means, are you saying that all the bunkers at the Old Course were created by man?
Yes.
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Just to show that sheep can and do build bunkers, I snapped this shot at Royal North Devon, just to the left of the green on the second par 3 on the front side; basically at the far end of the property.
(http://members.cox.net/pete72/RND%20bunker.jpg)
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Bob
You've already answered AHughes question, but I wanted to ask it in a slightly different way, to try to understand it better. Do you think it's accurate to say:
"The locations of all the bunkers at TOC are informed by human agency, including those pre-existing bunkers not created by man, which bunkers were then utilized and incorporated into the design by said human agency".
Thanks
Peter
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Yes
Bob, is this your opinion, or is it based on anything factual?
Also, just so I am clear, you are none of the bunkers at the Old Course were created by anything other than man?
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Peter - Yes.
AHughes - I have no empirical evidence for my theory. But then the proponents of the goat, sheep, rabbit and divot theories have no empirical evidence supporting their theories either.
What my theory has that their theories lack is plausibiliy.
Bob
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For the purpose of this discussion, what do sheep and golfers have in common? They are both creatures of habit.
And what does this mean in the context of the bunker thread? It means that a herd of sheep, if given the opportunity, will return to the same spot over and over. Sounds like golfers, doesn't it. Golfers will return to the same spot (ie hit a ball to the same landing area) over and over.
So, both explanations of the origin of bunkers sound plausible; especially since both golfers (or any stick and ball game) and grazing animals have been on the land for more than a thousand years (give or take a few).
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Adam -
The greatness of TOC doesn't derive from the greatness of its isolated features. Its greatness is due to the relationships between those features. Those inter-relationships are what makes TOC so remarkably strategic.
To explain those sophisticated relationships as the unintended by-product of (a) sheep returning to sleep in the same spot every night or (b) divots left by golfers (virtually all of whom are slicers) doesn't sound very plausible to me. In fact it sounds like a tall tale.
OTOH, there is a simple, plausible alternative explanation. The only thing it lacks is the misty romanticism of the traditional explanations for the origins of TOC.
Bob
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I have little doubt that golfers returning and playing from the same position explains a significant proportion of bunkers, especially those on the line of play. However I would not be so quick to discount the livestock and wildlife theory.
Those bunkers found in the lee of a larger dune or hill are much more likely to have developed over time due to the movements of livestock. They will constantly return the same places at night and during episodes of bad weather.
Further to that they will also constantly walk on the same path. Over time this devlops into a rut. In a seaside location with the light soils and high winds I could easily see one of these ruts being eroded into a bunker.
I just thought of something. How about someone give the greenkeeper at Brora a call. ;D
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"I have little doubt that golfers returning and playing from the same position explains a significant proportion of bunkers, especially those on the line of play."
Sean, this is where I get a bit confused with that line of thinking, and have some trouble with it:
TOC seems to be regarded by all the experts past and present as a wonderfully "strategic" golf course. If the bunkers there are a result of golfers often "playing from the same position," wouldn't those bunkers be almost entirely "penal" in nature?
I mean, if you put bunkers in the very place the average golfer has always (and will always) hit to, you're simply penalizing the average player.
My confusion is, I've never read anyone describing TOC as an example of "penal architecture" -- so, even though the theory seems plausible to me too, I have a hard time subscribing to it.
Peter
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Peter,
I can understand them being penal if they had developed on a parkland style course where the trees were dictating the shape of the whole. On TOC and many links this is not the case. It's not as if you have to aim for 15 yards of fairway and if you miss you're in a cavernous bunker or trees. You're generally given anywhere from 30-50 yards of fairway and the chance of being in a bunker or the gorse, but probably an equal chance of having lady luck smile upon you.
I would think it is more often the better player who may try to get too cute and flirt with the hazards that will find grief. The poorer striker of the ball will aim well wide of the hazard while the better striker of the ball will aim closer to the hazard. I would also say that in the second case the gathering nature of many of these hazards and the golfer's inability to account for it plays as large a part in their undoing as the inability to strike the ball well.
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Peter:
As for TOC and the idea of penal or strategic, history seems to tell us that TOC was once upon a time was not just a remarkably penal course but an increasingly dangerous one too as play increased.
Apparently it was pretty narrow---eg maybe 40 yards wide but the problem was golfers were almost constantly coming at one another on narrow shared fairways as the course was played out and back down those narrow corridors to common greens.
I think it might have been Lord Playfair who directed Alan Robertson (the man some consider to be history's first golf architect) to clear out the course of gorse or whatever and gave him something like 50 pounds to do that. That was real early in the evolution of golf architecture.
When the course was widened---and apparently widened for safety's sake it sort of instantly became strategic because those golfers coming at each other could take a lot more lines with the essentially melded contiguous holes going out and back.
I don't think this was done exactly at that time to create architectural strategy---it just sort of happened and evolved for other reasons, like a lot of things in golf. In the case of TOC's widening, it was done for safety basically. ;)
TOC is considered to be the prototype of all architecture but after-all, how many golf courses have routings like TOC with so many contiguous (shared) holes in such a narrow over all band?
I bet TOC isn't much more than 200 yards wide. Do you see how unusual that really is in golf and why those basically double-wide fairways made the course instantly strategic because of that double wide concept?
Other golf courses around the world could do that but to do it like TOC's contiguous hole width they'd generally have to make each individual hole about the width of TOC's double wide routing that is basically a string of two holes in one constantly coming at each other (except for the "hook" at the far end).
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I have little doubt that golfers returning and playing from the same position explains a significant proportion of bunkers, especially those on the line of play. However I would not be so quick to discount the livestock and wildlife theory.
Sean - You have "little doubt"? Then I assume you have ample evidence for your view. I would be interested in seeing it. I also note that if these things occur naturally, I assume you will be able to cite for us evidence from other locations where divots and livestock generate strategic bunkering schemes.
TEP - The widening of TOC may have resulted in the single most significant unlearned lesson in the history of gca.
Bob
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Bob, it would seem only fair at this point to question what is your basis for saying all the bunkers at the Old Course were physically created by man. My understanding is that it is more your 'gut' then anything else?
The story about the Road Hole bunker that I had always heard was Allan Robertson created it etc. But Ian Andrew's blog says: the people of the town apparently used to dig in many of the bunkers to get shells and this location was a particularly good spot close to the town. The bunkers depth came from the people’s quest for shells; which eventually was stopped when the golf course became to busy and popular to allow this activity to continue.
Ian also mentions that an old map shows the bunker there when Robertson was only 17 (that map would be interesting to see--how many bunkers were there, how many have been added and removed etc. Ian, are you listening? ;))
So is this an example of a bunker that man created (independently of golf) and then adapted for golf? Was the green placed so as to maximize the use of the already-existing bunker? Bob, is this an example of what you are thinking?
Also, it strikes me as odd that there are so many bunkers scattered throughout the course, but no real records of when they appeared or who dug them or had them put in if indeed man created most/all of them.
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"TOC is considered to be the prototype of all architecture but after-all, how many golf courses have routings like TOC with so many contiguous (shared) holes in such a narrow over all band?
I bet TOC isn't much more than 200 yards wide. Do you see how unusual that really is in golf and why those basically double-wide fairways made the course instantly strategic because of that double wide concept?"
TE - thanks.
I've watched the play at TOC dozens of times, and it never registered on me how narrow it is, especially given the way it plays. That's remarkable.
(Thanks for the mini-history lesson, btw: It's interesting how, historically, the intentional, the necessary, and the natural all play a part.)
On your last point: if I undersood it right, a new course might have to be about 400 yards wide to at least potentially offer a playing-venue like TOC. That doesn't seem all that wide to me. (Or is it? I don't know). Are there patches of land out there that no one's considered putting a golf course on because they are 'only' 400 yards wide?
Didn't anyone but Jones-Mackenzie pick up on what was really 'going on' at TOC?
Peter
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AHughes -
We have two competing theories. There is the rabbits and divots theory and there is the hand of man theory.
Neither theory has any empirical evidence to support it.
First, that means the proponents of either theory are not in a position to have "little doubt" about their views.
Second, when there is no convincing evidence that cuts for one theory over another, you fall back on the one that is most plausible.
So let's do the plausibility analysis. Let's ask two questions:
Is there evidence at other courses where sophisticated strategic bunkering arrangements were derived from rabbits and divot holes? I don't know of any.
Is there evidence at other course where sophisticated strategic bunkering arrangements were derived from human planning? Yes. Every other course I am familiar with.
That's what I'm saying.
Bob
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A stray thought for anyone who may know---is the bunkering now roughly the same on the Old Course as it was when the course followed the old clockwise, lefthand route? Or were old bunkers filled in and new ones created after Old Tom created the standalone first green and the counter-clockwise rotation became the norm?
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What does everyone think about this -- apologies if everyone already was operating under this assumption and as usual I was obtuse:
My original assumption was that man chose the land, set the tees and holes, and then rabbits and sheep followed. Bunkers thus were formed by rabbits, sheep, and man, but man's being along the line of play, and animals wherever.
But was the reality really the reverse of this? Given the complete lack of agronomy, is a more-likely assumption that man located where the turf was amenable to the game? And that the choice of linksland was a product of:
1. Land useless agriculturally, so that no one sought to keep off animals or undo their "destruction" of the land,
2. Place where rabbits and sheep already roamed, providing a closely-mown, ready for play surface?
I assumed that man chose the land and "built" the course first, and sheep and rabbits then somehow "moved in" and started building bunkers over a course whose tees and holes already were fixed.
But isn't it more likely to have happened this way: man chose land where the sheep and rabbits already roamed. He would have been confronted by a land where the animals closely cropped the grass, allowing for play, but that unfortunately was littered with sandy pits and rabbit holes -- an unfortunate byproduct of land otherwise ideal due to its closely-mown grass? Where said bunkers were allowed to grow, and not immediately eradicated, because the land was worthless agriculturally?
In this scenario, rabbits and sheep did play monkeys at the typewriter. Slopes in the lee and hollows -- later "collection areas" -- would have been pockmarked with "bunkers." This word in quotes, though, as it was meaningless before golfers came along to create and name the concept.
What happened next: golfers embued those bunkers with strategic meaning by choosing tees and holes that brought those features into play. I assumed, certainly wrongly, a course whose location was fixed. But surely golfers chose an already-pockmarked land, and eventually, somehow, figured out the game was made more interesting when they relocated tees and holes to bring those sandy areas into play.
Thus, before golfers = meaningless sandy pits. After golfers = "bunkers."
So that's two theories:
1. Golfers chose land that already was heavily pockmarked with sandy waste pits and introduced the concept of strategic (or penal) bunkers through their choices of where to locate the tees and holes.
2. Golfers' repeated play. Through their play, they opened gashes / divots in the ground that grew into bunkers positioned exactly where their shots sometimes finished.
In both cases, you could say that man is the source of the strategic bunker, but this discovery was serendipitous; i.e., not the product of someone purposely building a bunker in a certain spot for "strategic" reasons. That idea must have developed out of the original discovery.
I'm sure everyone has already thought of this and that I was just misreading the posts because of my probably-wrong perspective.
Now, as to the Wethered & Simpson position...
Bob C.: why do you see the man and rabbit theories as competing?
Here's another possibility: golfers chose land that was heavily pockmarked with sandy waste areas. They located tees and holes to avoid as much of these as possible. The idea was that these areas should be out of play.
But then something unintentional happened: through repeated play, golfers created their own sandy waste areas. Because these areas fell within the boundaries of play, golfers could not avoid the conclusion: sandy waste areas can make the game more interesting.
Thus, the discovery of the strategic bunker...
Mark
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Mark B. asks:
Bob C.: why do you see the man and rabbit theories as competing?
Answer: They don't have to be. But that is not the history of TOC that people swallow hook, line and sinker. The standard history is that TOC has no architect; that it was formed by forces beyond the ministrations of mere human beings; that it magically emerged from the dunesland thanks to sheep, goats and divots.
I think that standard history is a bunch of whooey.
Bob
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Bob,
So one day a man with a shovel went on a lovely walk on the links and with only golf in mind dug some holes in the (thanks to the Rabbits and Sheep) close mown grass. He did this because the game was way to easy for him, what with the fancy new 1820's model driver he'd recently purchased. Behold over the next days or months or years he fine tuned these holes into a wonderful course. Funnily enough no-one knows the name of this man or men. This when humans are generally pretty good at documenting and promoting their achievments.
I still have "little doubt" that "A SIGNIFICANT PROPORTION" of the bunkers on TOC were either made or inspired by natural erosion. If said erosion was detrimental to the playing of golf perhaps it would be filled in by the players. Perhaps one day some extremely bright cookie put forth the idea to "move that hole (bunker) from there over to there" as it would add vast stategic interest. Over a few hundred years of erosion and remedies to this erosion why is it so hard to accept that the course just came to be that way..Due to erosion, divots and occasionally the intervention of man.
Also all this evidence you have of strategically placed bunkering. Any of the architects ever cited TOC as their inspiration?
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Also all this evidence you have of strategically placed bunkering. Any of the architects ever cited TOC as their inspiration?
I'm not sure if your question is serious. On the off chance that it is, I suggest you do some reading. Start anywhere. And start soon if you are going to participate here. In the literature of golf architecture no course is admired more than TOC. I can't think of an important architect (other than T. Fazio ;)) who has not cited TOC's remarkable strategies as an inspiration.
Bob
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Maybe I should have put the question in Italics. The fact that all these successful strategic minded architects use TOC as inspiration doesn't really provide evidence of either your theory or mine.
In short is it inspiration because it's natural and provides a base for what a golf course should look like?
Or is it inspiration because some really smart cookie/s between approx 1400 and 1840 went around digging strategically placed holes?
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Sean -
At the risk of beating a tired old horse again, neither of us can prove our preferred theory. Neither of us has any empirical evidence.
In the absence of any conclusive evidence, I will go with the the more plausible of the two theories. To think otherwise is to believe that the extraordinarily sophisticated strategies presented by TOC are primarily the work of chance.
I find that unlikely in the extreme.
Bob
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I think one of the best ways to even begin to answer this fundamental question about the beginning and evolution of various bunkers on a course like TOC is to determine just how long the greens have been where they are. We certainly do know that most all tees have changed from long ago golf at TOC not for the least reason being the fact of the Rule evolution on where a golfer must tee off from. ;)
My sense on this question is that we also probably need to look not just at bunkers but what those old "swards" (the precusor of what we know today as fairway) were and were all about.
My sense is that golf and golf features way back in the 18th century and earlier were basically a matter of what might be termed "path of least resistance" golf. ;)
That kind of thing wasn't really a matter of man "making" much in the way of architecture, it was more a matter of just playing on, around and over what was already there from the evolution and forces of Nature. ;)
But come about the middle of the 19th century all that obviously begun to change and probably changed very dramatically into something more along the lines of what we today think of as golf course architecture.
But I think we need to look more carefully at not what original bunkers were but what original "swards" were, and more importantly WHY (how they happened). ;)
I say that because if we understand "swards" (those unusual areas where original bents and fescues thrived without other vegetative competition) better we just may find that some of the original bunker formations and such were not much more than just "some of the rest" (those things other than "swards").
To understand better the way golf (and architecture?) once was before about the middle of the 19th century I don't think one can ever appreciate enough just how rudimentary (unaltered) it really was way back then. ;)
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TEP -
Things probably were very, very rudimentary early on at TOC. My guess is that the TOC we know and love today was the product of a long series of incremental changes over the span of three or four centuries. None of which changes was individually very dramatic or notable.
The big change was, of course, the decision to widen the playing corridors in the 1870's. Again I am guessing, but I would think that the widening created a cascade of other, more minor changes as people digested the significance of the expanded playing areas. All of a sudden the "swards" were both quantitatively and qualitatively different.
Some of these changes involved simply finding happy accidents and leaving them alone. Others were more pro-active.
I would love to know, for example, the architectural evolution of the Principal's Nose Bunker. When did it first show up, how has it changed, etc.?
Bob
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In the absence of any conclusive evidence, I will go with the the more plausible of the two theories. To think otherwise is to believe that the extraordinarily sophisticated strategies presented by TOC are primarily the work of chance.
I find that unlikely in the extreme
Bob, there is some logic to that, but it still doesn't sit well with me.
In Balfour's Reminiscences of Golf on St. Andrews Links, he talks about the course from around 1840 or so up through the end of the 19th century. He talks about how narrow the course was in its original out and back configuration, "flanked by high whins for the greater part of its extent."
More germane to this discussion, however, Balfour says the course at that time was "studded with sand-pits". Now, this says nothing about how the bunkers were created, but it does say something about the bunkers and their relevance to course strategy--the course at the time had lots of bunkers and was a penal exam, not the strategic course it would later become. The golfer was forced to attack the bunkers and play over them. Giving them a wide berth was not an option due to the narrowness and the whins.
When the course was later widened, those same bunkers that had studded the penal course now took on a strategic dimension--no longer was the golfer forced to play directly over Hell to play the 14th, rather he had options to choose from and choices to make.
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"My guess is that the TOC we know and love today was the product of a long series of incremental changes over the span of three or four centuries. None of which changes was individually very dramatic or notable."
Bob:
That very well may be the case. However, my point is I just don't think there probably were many, if any, purposeful man-made architectural changes to a course like TOC prior to perhaps the first half or the middle of the 19th century.
If there were incremental changes to a course like that and the few others of its remarkable age I think those changes in the centuries leading up to perhaps the beginning of the 19th century was the work of the forces of Nature---including wind and water, rabbits, sheep, birds, the footsteps and early I&B impliments of man, whatever. I just don't think much of anything was done prior to that time that we today would considered to be "dedicatedly man-made architectural" (approximately 1850).
As Behr said: "Golf at that time was in that innocent state in which man did not think to do such things with what he was playing on." Golf in those times (before the 19th century) was in that state he called "Wild" golf.
This was before the idea of dedicated and purposeful man-made golf architecture, in my opinion.
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Not to totally flog the dead horse, but something else comes to mind. I was reading Finegan's Blasted Heath (or whatever his Scotland book is called) and he is describing Machrie. He say the course only has 5 bunkers.
As dramatic and undulating as the course is supposed to be, I assume it must have numerous natural collections areas. If so, why would the theory of ever-expanding divots not apply here? Conversely, are there no rabbits/sheep in need of shelter at Machrie?
So, after all this, I am left to ponder:
1. The Machrie conundrum
2. What it means that Balfour said St Andrews was studded with bunkers early on.
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Andy,
Perhaps a better question is, at what time did divots start being replaced or fixed? Is it possible that heavy play only commenced at machrie after this change?
Mark
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Mark, from what Finegan wrote, I am not at all sure heavy play ever commenced at Machrie, though your point on divot replacement is a fair one.
I remain intrigued by Balfour's comment. I suspect that is a hugely interesting area waiting to be mined--were the bunkers that 'studded' the mid-1800s course the same ones that would later become strategic when the course was widened? Were the old bunkers filled in and new ones added when the course was widened? etc.
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Balfour's and Macdonald's comments regarding the narrowness of the Old Course may be very germane.
Wouldn't narrowness have concentrated play through corridors? And wouldn't that in turn have increased the likelihood of repeated play from a spot?
Mark
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Wouldn't narrowness have concentrated play through corridors? And wouldn't that in turn have increased the likelihood of repeated play from a spot?
That seems reasonable, to an extent. However, look again at #3 at the Old Course:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v348/ahughes584/OldCourse_3.gif)
If the preponderance of bunkers came from those that 'studded' the course back in the narrow-corridor days, I would expect most bunkers to be clustered in the middle of the course. But that does not seem to be the case.
At this point, I am not even sure what I think happened or what my point is! ::)
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Andy,
Define the ancient centerline. From the up tee, there's almost a straight line of bunkers running down what is now the right side of the fairway. That's the slicer's side; could it be that this hole was widened by extending the fairway mostly to the left?
Mark
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Heh, good point. I had assumed the old narrow course was in the area between the current front and back nines, so anything on the 'edges' such as those 5 bunkers you allude to would have been outside the playable course then. But in reality, I have no idea if that is true.
But if the possibility you raise is true, then wouldn't the entire hole to the left of number 3, number 16, have been outside the course?
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8)
animals
people
wind
rain
erosion
galfers woking around whats there, good, bad or ugly just like the gorse
golfers, thinking they control the game by controlling or choosing the field of play or battle
the R&A, codifying the rules of engagement, boundaries of cheating, a means to an end
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Maybe you are looking at this from the wrong perspective.
The sand was always there - in vast waste areas and the close cropped fescues would presumably have been in the sheltered areas where rabbits collected. Over the years the golfers would have encouraged the grass to grow by whatever means, and the areas that didn’t grow would have remained as sand.
Photos of Hell’s Bunker through the ages appears to show that it has diminished in size.
So the bunkers came first and the fairways and greens followed?
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Mark — It is not always about the placement of the hazard.
You must also consider the variable of where play begins on a hole — the "tee". Instances where a hazard has been created — no matter its cause — the players may always adjust, to some degree, the beginning point to suite either a more difficult or easier challenge.
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John, maybe. Either way, it doesn't preclude the possibility of Wethered and Simpson's contention, does it?
Forrest, I'm not sure I understand your point in relation to the likelihood that man created bunkers via repeated play to a spot.
But your post did get me to think about the likelihood that golfers would have teed off from a concentrated area, increasing the probability that balls would have come to rest in the same spots.
The first rule of the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers' 13 rules of golf, circa 1744, reads:
1. You must Tee your Ball within a Club's length of the Hole.
I would guess the movement of the holes, and therefore the tees, was rather limited. So from day to day, there likely was a smaller dispersion of shots than today (with all the different tees and the daily repositioning of the hole). But more importantly, the teeing area would have been smaller back then than today. So, on any given day, in the olden days there likely was a smaller dispersion of where shots came to rest versus today.
In other words, in ancient times it was more likely that balls came to rest in the same spot -- enough to generate the repeated play necessary to wear out the turf!
Mark
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Mark — I am convinced that hazards came to be as a result of many factors. Those listed here are all likely.
A question here is whether sheep and other animals could possibly have been so smart to place hazards so strategically. My point is that the placement of hazards may not have been so essential at a time when tees and greens were very fluid. In golf's early days, "holes" as we know them were ever-changing. Golfers tee-ed it up at will and whim...greens (targets) were merely a dug hole with no improved turf — certainly none too much better than that elsewhere.
Placing hazards in strategic locations may not have been so much about placing the hzards, as it may have been about deciding where to begin play and end play. That variable would have been far easier to change and adjust. Unlike today when we hold the locations and shapes and exactnes of green and tees somewhat sacred...and now, seem to be changing the hazards more often.
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Thinking that bunkers came to be in the 17th, 18th or even the 19th century because so many balls came to rest in the same spot is a quaint notion that is only that until one starts to think how preposterous a notion it really is. ;)
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Thinking that bunkers came to be in the 17th, 18th or even the 19th century because so many balls came to rest in the same spot is a quaint notion that is only that until one starts to think how preposterous a notion it really is. ;)
Don't you ;) me, Tom Paul, I know a broadside when I read it! I'm not saying all bunkers, just those specifically in the line of play.
Sean, I was afraid of this. We need to get past an ad hominem argument using one hole on one course. (Although: what about the line of bunkers down the left side, then!)
What do you make of bunkers that are in "natural" collection areas? For example, the Road Hole Bunker was widened and deepened by townsfolk digging out shells, but how was it originally created?
Mark
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"For example, the Road Hole Bunker was widened and deepened by townsfolk digging out shells, but how was it originally created?"
I have no real idea where it came from or how it may've been documented (if in fact it ever has been) but I've seen it said (written) a number of times that the Road Hole green and the Road Hole bunker were perhaps the FIRST dedicated expression of man-made golf architecture. Attribution for them has apparently always been given to Alan Robertson who has often been called the very first golf course architect.
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As my physics professor used to say, extraordinary explanations require extraordinary proof.
Bunkers that appear from nature is an extraordinary explanation that requires extraordinary proof.
Or you could flip the problem over. If bunkers at TOC were formed by natural forces, then one would expect to see the same natural forces at work at all other older links courses. Afterall, those other courses are subject to the same natural forces. But you don't.
Explanations from nature have very high hurdles to clear. I've seen nothing so far to indicate that the standard TOC non-human origins story has cleared them.
As much as the romantic in me wishes that weren't the case.
Bob
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Bob:
If one carefully analyzes some of the earliest drawings of golf and even some of the earliest photographs of linksland courses one can see bunker features et al that sure do look to me like primarily the work of Nature rather than the dedicated hand of man (man-made architecture). This is certainly not to say that there seem to be any of those far more common "revetted" bunkers and pot bunkers and such in those very early drawings and early photos that became so commonly seen in linksland and GB golf architecture later.
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Tom -
Let me clarify what I'm trying to say. Yes, bunkers may arise naturally. I guess.
What doesn't happen naturally is their arrangment in strategically interesting patterns across a hundred acres or so that make up a golf course.
Sheep and rabbits are good at doing many things, but that is not one of them.
Bob
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Or you could flip the problem over. If bunkers at TOC were formed by natural forces, then one would expect to see the same natural forces at work at all other older links courses. Afterall, those other courses are subject to the same natural forces. But you don't.
Bob, I think that is exactly right---the same thought that made me mention Machrie and its 5 bunkers. Though I am not sure that all old links would have had rabbit farms or sheep and whatnot running about...
Do you take Balfour at his word that the Old Course was studded with bunkers just before the widening? I do, though what 'studded' might mean to him I do not know. But if it was, I have a hard time imagining golfers intentionally creating all those bunkers at that time.
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Bunkers that appear from nature is an extraordinary explanation that requires extraordinary proof.
Bob,
I think that bunkers were more probably before the status quo was interrupted by (an ever increasing number of) humans wanting to play golf. Prior to this time little or no man hours would have been wasted on unproductive terrain such as the links. As such I think it is more likely that the hand of man is seen in which bunkers were filled in, tended or seeded to stabilise them.
I don't know whether there was a keeper of the green before Allan Roberston but if there wasn't I would imagine that these changes became more prominent around his time and continued and were improved upon by Tom Morris. Say from the 1850's onwards.
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?????
(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k204/MSBIII/236.jpg)
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Sure, you had to bring it back--looks like the rabbits have gotten to work on that course ;)
Strange the divots all appear to be up on the hill rather than in the lower, flatter area.
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Sure, you had to bring it back--looks like the rabbits have gotten to work on that course ;)
Strange the divots all appear to be up on the hill rather than in the lower, flatter area.
No! The angle is looking down a slope into a collection area.
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Sean Walsh:
In post #69 you bring up an interesting item---eg "seeding".
On linksland courses it would be good to know when man began to actually use seed or seeding on golf courses. My sense is that may've begun a whole lot later than we may suspect.
One of the most essential things about how golf happened in the linksland in the first place has to do with the two basic natural grasses there that were so conducive to golf---fescue (festuca) and bent (agrostis). One reason they were was in the natural "swards", the precusor to fairways, they had not much competition since they were two grasses that could survive in real acidity.
But they were pretty much totally unmaintained in the real old days because of lack of mowers of any kind (sheep and rabbits primarily). And do you know that in the very old days golf in the Scottish linksland was primarily played in winter because in summer the grasses could grow too long?
In that kind of natural environment, I suspect the idea of actually seeding a golf course in any way was a long, long time into the future.
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Then there's this....
(http://members.cox.net/krmoum/sheep_bunker.jpg)
Ken
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"I'm striving to become a sheep!
KMoum:
Is there a singular for sheep in Scotland, and if not, why not? Like, perhaps a shep?
And if not, I think it's high time we create the word shep as the singular of sheep, don't you? It just sounds right, don't you think?
And what the hell kind of characteristic does a living thing have to possess to deserve being referred to in quantity as something like a "flock"?
I think the shep in quantity needs a plural that has some alliteration to it so it does need and "S", at least, as the first letter.
Checking the Thesaurus these would seem to be the available alternatives that begin with "S" for a group of sheep together;
Synod, squad, string, spate, sloth, skulk, school, shoal, swarm, spring, sheaf, snowball, stockpile, set, suite, series.
Take your pick for sheep together as to your favorite amongst those althernatives listed above.
I think I like bevy. Don't you think a bevy of sheep sounds about right?
Let's see what we can do for a bunch of rabbits, shall we?
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And the plural of "house" should be "hice."
Re seeding: couldn't birds eat them, defeating early attempts to use seed to negate creation of strategic, manmade bunkers?
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"And the plural of "house" should be "hice."
I think you're right, Mark. I think that would most certainly make mice feel a whole lot better about themselves too, don't you, particularly when they cohabit our hice with us? I think they'd be far more secure and more likely to feel at home.
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If we are going to post pictures suggesting that some of the great golf courses in the world just kinda, sorta happened,
then I reserve the right to repeat:
Who knows, bunkers might sometimes arise naturally. I doubt it, but it's not impossible.
But that's not the point. The point is that what doesn't happen naturally is their arrangement in strategically interesting patterns across a hundred acres or so that make up a golf course.
Sheep and rabbits are good at doing many things, but that is not one of them.
Or to paraphrase (again) my beloved high school physics professor (he is now asking about royalties), extraordinary explanations of golf course formation require proof more extraordinary than a couple of modern photos of Scottish swards.
;)
Bob
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"Re seeding: couldn't birds eat them, defeating early attempts to use seed to negate creation of strategic, manmade bunkers?"
Mark:
Actually, there was a short piece in one of the golf architecture books from Peter Thompson where he mentioned that the birds were what distributed seed in the swards early on. I'll see if I can find it and quote it.
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"But that's not the point. The point is that what doesn't happen naturally is their arrangement in strategically interesting patterns across a hundred acres or so that make up a golf course."
Bob:
I should show you about a five mile stretch below Amelia Island Florida along old A1A where there are reams of natural bunker features. If one wanted to make a golf course there, the trick would really just be to arrange fairway amongst them to make it interesting and strategic.
I suspect in the very old days of golf people just arranged holes amongst the natural arrangements of "sward" (natural grass areas) and sand or dune or naturally occuring blowouts (what we formally call bunkers). Behr called this kind of early totally natural golf "wild" golf. I call that early type of thing "path of least resistance" golf, if one is going to assign some kind of strategic import to playing a golf ball across and around it.
But how would one go about attempting to emulate that original natural linksland arrangement of sward and sand areas on, say, an inland course today that possesses no natural sand?
In the sense of bunkering one might do what Gil Hanse and Bill Kittleman tend to do on some courses, even inland---eg just scatter rugged bunkers of all kinds of shapes and sizes and odd formations all over the place for the simple reason to make it appear they are all naturally occuring even if some are strategic and some are in no sense strategic or meaningful to anyone's playability.
I think Gil certainly realizes some might accuse him of "eye candy" bunkering with this kind of arrangement but I don't think he cares, as he feels it's done in the name of more aptly emulating the natural arrangements of say coastal linksland.
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Maybe this should be a separate thread, but how do you keep a blowout bunker from blowing out?!
I would guess you take a tack similar to a revetted or sod bunker, but that seems too rectilinear.
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"I'm striving to become a sheep!
KMoum:
Is there a singular for sheep in Scotland, and if not, why not? Like, perhaps a shep?
Synod, squad, string, spate, sloth, skulk, school, shoal, swarm, spring, sheaf, snowball, stockpile, set, suite, series.
Take your pick for sheep together as to your favorite amongst those althernatives listed above.
I think I like bevy. Don't you think a bevy of sheep sounds about right?
Let's see what we can do for a bunch of rabbits, shall we?
You really need a copy of "An Exaltation of Larks" by James Lipton. See Amazon.com
I have one and it says it's a colony of rabbits, or a husk of hares.
You're not going to get me to bite on sheep, however. It is and will be a flock of the fuzzy things.
It does bother me that Lipton suggests that the term should be a Lie of Golfers.
BTW, I just wasn't satisfied with being a GCA llama, so I up(?) graded to sheep.... mostly out of love for Brora Golf Club.
Ken
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"BTW, I just wasn't satisfied with being a GCA llama, so I up(?) graded to sheep.... mostly out of love for Brora Golf Club.
Ken"
Has anyone told you recently you're really weird?
Welcome to the club.
BTW, sheep have never had a single thing over llama---not ever.
But if you want to debate the relative measure of sheep against camels, I'm game.
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Has anyone told you recently you're really weird?
Weird? Once in awhile. More often it's been "mental." As in head case on the golf course.
My wife thinks it's odd that I would show up on the first tee of a couples golf tournament with a driver she's never seen.
Did you know it's not normal to be normal?
Ken
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Nebraska sand hills has more of these cattle made blowout bunkers amongst the grassy prairies than they have a population of people. Below are scenes around one of the finest pieces of ground I ever saw for a golf course.
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l76/rjdaley/P1010023.jpg)
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l76/rjdaley/P1010052.jpg)
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l76/rjdaley/P1010100.jpg)
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l76/rjdaley/P1010067.jpg)
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No! The angle is looking down a slope into a collection area.
Oh. Hmmm. Nevermind. That makes more sense ::)
But that's not the point. The point is that what doesn't happen naturally is their arrangement in strategically interesting patterns across a hundred acres or so that make up a golf course.
But Bob, we already kinda know the old, narrow Old Course was studded with bunkers and was in no way strategic. Is it your belief that all those bunkers were filled in and scores of new more strategic ones built, or that the course widening made all those bunkers strategic when suddenly there was width, or some other option?
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A Hughes
I have hypothesised on the Reverse Course threads that 'strategy' evolved at the Old Course by two things - widening the fairways and reversing the order of play. I need to check the information on St Andrews to check the timelines, but the combination produced IMP a more strategic golf course.
It may have been genius, it may have been happenstance - who knows what the driving cause for the change was. Was it a seeking of strategy, or was it just providing a wider playing area with safer lines of play for the increasing numbers playing the course?
James B
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JB
It's pretty certain that the widening was made to both increase the throughput of golfers and offer them some safety.
The best contemprary account (Balfour) postulates that the widening made the course LESS interesting to the golfer and less conducive to the formlation and execution of golfing strategies.
MB
As to the original question, the evolution of bunkering (in Scotland, at least) was far more due to man than slightly less rational animals. The best bunkers are in places towards which the terrain will feed then eventually funnel an errantly directed rolling golf ball. Some of the worst are where even well-meaning and relatively compoetent men think they should be (viz. the ugly and irrelevant pots put by low on the right side of the outward holes at the Old Course; or 95+% of modern bunkers).
RFG
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Rich, are you familiar with anything that describes the genesis of the better, or better known, strategic bunkers such as Hell, or the Principal's Nose, Strath/Hill, the pots in the middle of 12 etc? Were they there when Balfour described the numerous bunkers that 'studded' the course.
You imply that they are man-made ('far more due to man')..do you have reason to believe that about St Andrews?
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Excellent post, Rich!
"Welcome back Dr. Falken. Would you like to play a game?"
Mark
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AH
By "man-made" I include bunkers whose genesis began with angry men and their niblicks hacking away from areas where balls tended to settle. When I was writing my book on the Old Course I saw nothing to indicate that most of the oldest and most famous bunkers were anything but acts of fate rather than design. The big ones (e.g. Hell) probably started as blowouts, but the pots were probably created post-facto, as it were. The names of the bunkers, e.g. Principal's Nose came after they had been in play for some time, not when they were created. Also, as I remember it, a lot of bunkers were in fact filled in when the course was expanded in Balfour's day.
MB
Tic Tac Toe, please.....