{"id":927,"date":"2012-08-10T13:27:14","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T18:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=927"},"modified":"2012-08-10T13:27:57","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T18:27:57","slug":"the-pga-championships-elimination-of-bunker-and-its-potential-long-term-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/personalities\/927\/the-pga-championships-elimination-of-bunker-and-its-potential-long-term-effect","title":{"rendered":"The PGA Championship’s Elimination of Bunkers –What’s Next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The PGA\u2019s decision to treat all those deep sandy pits that look exactly like bunkers at Kiawah\u2019s Ocean Course during the PGA Championship this week as \u201csandy areas through the green\u201d raises some interesting questions.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The whole notion of \u201cwaste areas\u201d has a provocative provenance.<\/p>\n

According to Forrest Richardson, a golf course architect based in Arizona who wrote a book several years ago in collaboration with Mark Fine called Bunkers, Pits & Other Hazards<\/em>, Pete Dye coined the term \u201cwaste bunker\u201d\u2014another of his long string of innovating contributions to golf architecture.\u00a0\u00a0 It was \u201cduring the building of Harbour Town,\u201d according to Bunkers, Pits & Other Hazards<\/em>, \u201cwhen a sewer line break caused thousands of gallons of raw sewage to flood the unfinished 16th hole.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Harbour Town--Where the "Waste Bunker" was Invented<\/p><\/div>\n

Here\u2019s how Dye explained what happened next, as reported by Richardson and Fine:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe saw the contractor was having a hell of a time, and so we told them they could let it run along the fairway.\u00a0\u00a0 We created some dams, and there the sewage sat for several days.\u00a0 In the end, we compacted it into a flat bunker.\u00a0 Nothing would grow there, so I brought in a bunch of crushed seashells. We called it a \u2018waste bunker\u2019 for obvious reasons.\u00a0 And the name stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2004, Stewart Cink was involved in a controversy on that same 16th hole at Harbour Town, when he removed loose impediments from the waste bunker.\u00a0 The controversy was over whether he had removed fragments of shell, which are regarded as loose impediments and were legal to move, or sand, which is not.<\/p>\n

As the USGA noted when asked, \u201cthe Rules of Golf do not define such areas [that is, waste bunkers].\u00a0 By Definition, a bunker is a prepared area of ground from which turf or soil has been removed and replaced with sand or the like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The USGA went on to note that \u201ca natural sandy area is not a hazard, and a player whose ball lies in such an area may ground his club lightly in, or remove loose impediments from, the area as the area is through the green. The PGA Tour Rules Committee identified a number of these areas around the Harbour Town Golf Links, referred to them as “waste areas” on their Local Rules sheet and treated them as areas through the green for the competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is exactly what the PGA is doing this week at Kiawah\u2014treating all sandy areas as \u201cthrough the green.\u201d<\/p>\n

To me, this raises the larger question of why bunkers have the unique status they do.\u00a0 Many hazards are marginal to the line of play, but bunkers are usually integral to the hole.\u00a0\u00a0 I understand why you can\u2019t improve your lie in a bunker (as you can\u2019t anywhere), but why can\u2019t you take a practice swing as long as it is done in a way that won\u2019t improve your lie?\u00a0\u00a0 Players who are in the rough often take many practice swings before unleashing at the ball.\u00a0 What\u2019s the difference?\u00a0\u00a0 They are \u201ctesting conditions\u201d as they prepare the shot.<\/p>\n

The PGA Championship provide an interesting test here of whether or not being able to ground your club and take practice swings in what are bunkers in everything but name has any impact on scoring.\u00a0 Looking at how often players get up and down from greenside \u201csandy areas through the green\u201d as compared to when they are playing from bunkers would be a good measure of the effect of the decision to adjust the rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The PGA\u2019s decision to treat all those deep sandy pits that look exactly like bunkers at Kiawah\u2019s Ocean Course during… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,9,6134,17,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf-course-architecture","category-golf","category-pga-championship","category-courses-and-travel","category-personalities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2012\/08\/hilton_head_harbourtowngl11.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":932,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions\/932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}