[Andy Hughes]

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.  

[Mark Bourgeois]

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

[Andy Hughes]

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.

[Mark Bourgeois]

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

[Andy Hughes]

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:


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!  

[Mark Bourgeois]

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

[Andy Hughes]

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?

[Steve Lang]

 

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

[John Chilver-Stainer]

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?

[Forrest Richardson]

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.

[Mark Bourgeois]

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

[Forrest Richardson]

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.

[TEPaul]

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.  

[Mark Bourgeois]

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

[TEPaul]

"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.

[BCrosby]

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

[TEPaul]

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.

[BCrosby]

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

[Andy Hughes]

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.

[Sean Walsh]

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.

[Mark Bourgeois]

?????

[Andy Hughes]

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.  

[Mark Bourgeois]

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.

[TEPaul]

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.

[Ken Moum]

Then there's this....



Ken

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