Rakes in Bunkers - Moving Forward

[bdoug10]

Pretty sure my club has added a few and enlarged others in order to get the course rating up. I have noticed the ones that got bigger to have grass faces

[3Puttpete]

PG, we have a lot, like ****ing heaps, and they aren’t just on the flat!
Takes a lot of time and effort to cut edges, clean up rake etc, I’d hate to know the amount of time and cost!

Just for example:


Like over bunkered IMO.

Is there any truth to the rumour the architect gets 10% of the construction cost added to his payment and bunkers cost a lot to build?

[Captain Nemo]

How the **** would i know Mick!

[3Puttpete]

How the **** would i know Mick!

You could write a letter, make some phone calls. Investigate.

[thecollective]

Maybe you should ask the great man himself, I know he would be reading this

[Captain Nemo]

You could write a letter, make some phone calls. Investigate.

I don’t have time for that....

[hippo10]

I don't understand why golfers complain about lies not being perfect in bunkers, they are hazards and if you're unlucky|unskilled enough to go in one then there should be some penalty to your game. The great thing about bunkers as a hazard is that they still offer you some sort of a shot (albeit harder than if you were in the fairway) and if you're good|lucky enough you might escape without it impacting your score. The fairway pot bunkers on many of the great links courses are a great example where most of the time it costs you half a shot but at least you can advance the ball down the hole. Contrast that with a water hazard which is very binary, hit it in there, you lose a shot. I think a lot of golfers struggle with this ambiguity and amazingly people don't seem to complain about water hazards as much despite the fact that they always cost you a whole shot. It's an interesting exercise to imagine that every bunk on a course is actually a water hazard (not far from the truth for a couple of months of the year in Cairns!) and then imagine how much that would change your tactics playing a hole. This also might highlight that many courses have way more bunkers than they need, that could easily be replaced by runoff areas, grass bunkers etc. I'd also love to see more bunkers reduced in size but with fairway slopes falling into the bunker. Reduces the maintenance costs while keeping the effective size of the bunker larger and the added benefit of not having to rake/smooth your 5m of footprints leading into the bunker.
At the moment at my course we're not allowed rakes but nor are we allowed comp play so preferred lies isn't really an issue. I will say though that I've really not seen any particularly bad lies in the bunkers despite the lack of rakes. I'd even go as far to say that in general the lies have been better when people smooth out their footprints with a club or their foot compared to some of the raking jobs that you see in normal times. Even if you happen to end up in a footprint it's exceedingly rare that you have a lie so bad can't at least get it out of the bunker.
About the only good argument that I can see for preferred lies in increasing the speed of play but surely there's plenty of other things that will have more of an impact than this.

[Shreko]

PG, we have a lot, like ****ing heaps, and they aren’t just on the flat!
Takes a lot of time and effort to cut edges, clean up rake etc, I’d hate to know the amount of time and cost!

Just for example:


Like over bunkered IMO.

I found that it's easier to just hit driver over them and onto the green . Bloody nice course though

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[markTHEblake]

I don't understand why golfers complain about lies not being perfect in bunkers...,

we aint

they are hazards and if you're unlucky|unskilled enough to go in one then there should be some penalty to your game

there still is, even with preferred lie.