Greenside hazards

I think most golfers judge a green primarily from its hazard choice and placement. Those are seen from the landing zone, and often even from the tee, giving golfers their first impression of the challenge ahead. Indeed, hazard arrangement can make a green hard, beautiful and/or unique, or “same old, same old.”  

Since I was a 12-year-old golfer and aspiring architect, I asked myself why so many greens I saw, in person or on TV, featured sand bunkers on both right and left? I had read many golf course design articles, even at that age, and all stressed strategy was more important than penalty, but similar bunkers on both sides suggested it was the other way around for most architects of the day.

Many architects wrote that “Every hole should be remembered clearly after the round,” but designed so many cookie cutter greens it was actually hard to tell one from the other.

In my college landscape architecture courses, I was taught to design using the natural qualities of a site to give each a unique sense of place, not found elsewhere. Yet the trend in golf architecture was to make all courses conform to a style, moving as much earth as required to make each hole look similar to the next. I was upset and perplexed at losing nice commissions for stressing variety over sameness to a committee who believed in “style consistency.” “Shouldn’t they all be of the same style?” they asked.

Not necessarily, if you want them all to be unique…  

However, I found it was easy to get in some of those same repetitive human thought patterns, like brushing your teeth after the shower, never before, etc. And, I found my bunker patterns would get similar. I usually placed them aesthetics, slightly favoring the look over strategy, difficulty and balance.  Actually, I think all architects subtly put one of those as first among equals, and my bias was towards aesthetics. (Know Thyself!)

I first design the greens that have a solid natural feature and “sense of place,” and then fill in the rest that by necessity required more “hand of man” to be good. Green sites without a pond, mature trees or some interesting contour to be the design keynote usually use sand bunkers for challenge. Notice I don’t say “defense,” a subtle theoretical difference that leads to … bunker left, bunker right. Sand bunkers are traditional, attractive and visually dominant, so much so that they are really “stop signs” telling golfers should NOT play, rather than guiding play intelligently.

If you can avoid repetitive thinking, there really is an infinite number of ways to place them around greens. Eventually, I reasoned, somewhat counter intuitively, that the best way to bunker each green uniquely was to start with a variety pre-determined “hip pocket” ideas and find sites and to suit them considering all facets of design. Topography typically suggests a variety of natural bunker locations, usually defined as locations a natural up slope facing golfers for visibility. It’s possible to build big earth forms for bunker placement, but you can fall into those repetitive patterns more easily.

While following nature as much as possible, I seek differentiation by varying the number and type of greenside bunkers at each hole. I strive for some greens with no bunkers up to those with seven or eight. The most bunkers I ever put on a green was 11, on a par 3, which created a dramatic “sea of sand” effect, which can (and has) been overused. More than a few examples per course can be “too much of a good thing.”  

If two greens have the same number of bunkers, they get totally different arrangements, mixing large, medium, small or pot bunkers. Some sizing rules usually apply – open areas tend to get bigger bunkers because of available room and “scale.” However, sand bunkers provide visual scale and are good distance markers. They can be purposely over- or under-sized to fool the eye. Greens with no bunker can be the most difficult to judge the approach shot.

Modern architects have tended to build bigger, sometimes out of scale and dwarfing what should be the main visual highlight (the green.) Generally, but with exceptions, greenside bunkers should be visually smaller or similar in size to the green. If they get laterally too far from the green, they can fall out of the golfer’s field of vision.  

I like subtle and strategic interplay between different hazards. Placing them in varying locations –
staggering them to front, back, either side, close to the green, far from the green, above it, below it or both on one side. In fact, I reserve the “bunker left, bunker right” only for uphill, blind greens where I find they provide nice definition.  

I mix in simpler shapes with dramatic ones. Typically, single bunkers need more “shape” than those in a group or cluster, which can have relatively simple shapes.
 
Knowing golfers instinctively play away from higher penalty and visually dominant sand or water hazards, I mix hard hazards with benign one (or none at all) on the other side. This creates both the temptation of par vs. the dilemma of possible double bogey, and that makes golf entertaining.  
I also like the aesthetics and variety of other hazard types, and use mounds (large or smaller “chocolate drop”), grass hollows and grass bunkers, steep grass banks and fairway height “chipping areas.” I start designing with my “hip pocket” list of those, too.
 
To further accentuate all of this variety, I pay attention to the sequence of the bunkering for both fairways and greens, striving to follow a multiple bunker hole with a simpler one. As with every other aspect, of design, I go ‘round and ‘round, seeking the best design for each green, but tweaking for variety and balance. I will make field changes well into construction, whenever the “aha” moment for a truly inspired green design hits me. Whenever it strikes, I use it, because those greens are going to be there a long, long time.

Jeffrey D. Brauer is a veteran golf course architect responsible for more than 50 new courses and more than 100 renovations. A member and past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, he is president of Jeffrey D. Brauer/GolfScapes in Arlington, Texas. Reach him at jeff@jeffreydbrauer.com.