Forum > Rants

Tony Mitcheson

As someone who has played golf on and off for almost 30 years, is it me or is the condition of bunkers getting worse?

When playing last week we spotted one of those bunker-smoothing contraptions at work. IMHO, these machines do nothing more than flatten the sand into a congelead mud-like substance to the extent that you could feel and hear the club (correctly) hitting the sand behind the ball, only to skid off the thick "mud" into the equator of the ball, resulting in a thin shot into the lip of the bunker, after which the cycle starts again.

I do not recall this happening in the good old days when greenkeepers used rakes. Grrrr!

Paul Everett

Tony Mitcheson

Wayne Santorini

Have to say I agree with you Tony, far too many courses are not keeping the bunkers up to scratch.

Loads of stones and lack of sand

John Pettitt

David Marshall

And there was me thinking it was just the bunkers at my course that were rubbish.

If you are lucky ours have about 5mm of sand in, the rest is clay, almost impossible to get out of properly. If you are lucky enough to get out, you spend the next 10 minutes trying to get the crap off the club which is like super glue.

Christopher Watmore

My course must have the sand from all your courses in its bunkers then. I dislike them because there is so much sand. Its also the really heavy type of sand not the nice powder like stuff you see on the posh courses and on the courses on TV. You play a shot get a faceful of sand and find the ball hasn't really gone anywhere because the Sands killed your clubspeed. Also you always tend to get plugged lies in it even from balls that have rolled in, or you end up in the hundreds of unraked footprints that litter them.

I also hate them because its a pain in the ass to rake them every friday morning as we don't have one of them nice raking machines. The sand is heavy to move about which explains probably why the golfers don't bother raking them.

I'd rather play in some of the sand bare bunkers you guys have, because I know how to chip or pitch a ball off bare lie.

Steven Watmore

I'm glad to hear it's not just my course with crap bunkers.

obviously i'd rather hear that all bunkers are great but at least that means it's not just 1 course. Daft thing is i play 5 miles frome the North East coast which has millions of tons of beautiful fine sand , so there is some round here

 It's such a pain when i get in same of them as i have a good sand game but it is really hard to use correct techniques on mud/clay.

Chris i'd swap for lots of sand any day of the week.

Russell Middleton

This problem is due to 'Money'

Too many man hours in hand raking the bunkers so they send a guy out on a machine.

At my club the bunkers are poor.

Some have sand in them, but it's the wrong type!  Heavy sand full of stones

Other bunkes have hardly any sand in them.  A light covering of sand that is just hiding the mud underneath.  You hit a bunker shot only for you club to be deflected from it's trajectory.

I did speak to the pro at my club once about the bunkers and he said if they put the good sand in them it would just keep blowing away.  So they don't use the good sand but try and get a mixture of good sand and heavier sand.

Russ

Paul Everett

Patrick Bourke