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The bunker’s smarter sibling

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Ben Sims:
Bunkers get all the attention. I get it…they tend to define golf holes in a way that’s upfront and easily discussed. And like many things, form is more easily critiqued and judged than function.


But what about above ground features? They’re the smart sibling in my view. Rarely do people talk about what a mound near the green or “chocolate drops” in the rough looks like. They talk about where it is located and how it impacts play.


At CommonGround this week, my father-in-law and brother-in-law were smitten with how much a few of the grassy mounds dictated their decision-making. I rather enjoyed them not having a clue what to do based on a little bit of hidden ground and elevated hazard. I’m glad to see the social media photos of Old Barnwell also featuring some above ground, ahem, features.

Steve Lang:
 ;)  Ben,
So the $64,000 question, in retrospect, did they see the challenges as unfair?

Thomas Dai:
Lots of nice things about modest mounds, wee humps and gentle contouring especially when combined with short cut grass. Not so keen on the more vertical chocolate drop variety especially as they are usually covered in longer grass.
Contours are fun. They may not be amazingly photogenic, a seeming necessity these days, but they are also a lot less expensive and time consuming to maintain than sand bunkers.

Atb

Mark_Fine:
I said this quite a while ago but one of the above ground features that is going to make a comeback are trees.  It is an aerial game in many cases.  Why not more aerial hazards or bunkers in the sky as RTJ called them?  Trees, if selected properly and utilized well, can be a great strategic hazard.  They can also be poorly and overly used just like bunkers or any other hazard. 

Kalen Braley:
While I've never played a course with them, I've always been intrigued by the mounds DMK put in at Tetherow.

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