Tag: Sand bunkers

Sand in bunkers at Southern Hills ‘feels like you are holding a bunch of seashells’

When players open the face to hit bunker shots, they usually create a spray of whispy sand and leave a semicircular divot.

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When a pro mis-hits an approach shot, it’s not uncommon for the microphones to pick up a plea that almost no recreational golfer hopes for, “Get in the bunker, please!” The last place a weekend golfer wants to see his or her ball go is into a greenside bunker, but pros practice bunker shots a lot and know the sand is usually much more consistent than the rough. Getting up and down to save par from a bunker can often be much easier than doing it from the rough.

This week during the PGA Championship at Southern Hills, that might not be the case.

On Tuesday evening, Ian Poulter took to Instagram and commented, “You will see some shots out of bunkers this week which won’t have any spin due to the course fine gravel type of sand. You get tiny stones between the ball and the club face making it super inconsistent. Bunkers to be avoided at all costs. Even more so if you short side yourself.”

A close-up photo of a scratched wedge face followed, along with one last comment. “This is what the tiny stones do to the club when they get between the ball and face. The ball comes out a bit skirly with no spin. Very testing and hard to predict.”

Southern Hills Sand
Along with sand, tiny pebbles in the bunkers make controlling the ball a challenge. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

To be clear, there is sand in the bunkers, along with the tiny pebbles that Poulter referred to, but what is clear is that you are not going to hear players begging a wayward shot to find the bunkers this week.

“It is the one thing that caught my attention,” said Aaron Dill, the PGA Tour rep for Titleist Vokey Design wedges. “This sand is not like any sand that I’ve seen before. It’s really thick and really course, and it feels like you are holding a bunch of seashells or a bunch of little rocks.”

When players open the face of a wedge to hit bunker shots, they usually create a spray of whispy sand and leave a semicircular divot. There is also typically a powdery residue left on the face. Here, Dill said, it’s something else entirely.

Bunkers at Southern Hills
The mixture of sand and pebbles will make bunker shots unpredictable at Southern Hills. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

“Here it’s aggressive, life Wolverine took his claws and made a shred across the face,” he joked.

In the weeks leading up to this week’s PGA Championship, Dill made fresh sets of wedges for several players, including Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth, so they would have sharp, fresh grooves at the tournament. This week, however, he has been busy making wedges for other players, and in some cases, players are requesting backup wedges in case the pebbles damage the hitting area of either their sand wedge or lob wedge.

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“In a weird way, it’s a little damaging for wedge faces,” Dill said.

Wednesday afternoon in Tulsa, temperatures hovered around 90 degrees and the high on Thursday and Friday is expected to reach 90 as well. Southern Hills is drying and getting faster, both in the fairways and on the greens. If the putting surfaces get firmer and quicker, it will be hard to control the ball on the undulating greens. Combine that with grabby Bermuda rough, runoff areas and pebbly bunkers and you get a stern short-game test.

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Sand bunkers: Do we need them? Sheep Ranch challenges that question

Sand bunkers can be expensive to maintain and are often the first thing to show wear. It wouldn’t be surprising if this trend catches on. 

(Editor’s note: June 1 is the opening of Sheep Ranch, one of the most highly anticipated course openings of the last decade. Golfweek will have additional coverage all day long, including hourly photos on Instagram, and an Instagram Live with Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk.
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As part of today’s #SheepRanchDay, celebrating the opening of the newest track at Bandon Dunes, Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk was asked about the Bill Coore- and Ben Crenshaw-designed course that omitted sand bunkers.

How come?

Ever-present wind, Lusk told JuliaKate Culpepper.

“It’s hard to explain how strong that wind is,” Lusk said. “I’ll give a quick example — along the cliffs I hit a drive that went about 350 yards, and I don’t hit 350-yard drives. Into that same wind along the cliffs, I hit a very solid drive that went 140 yards. It’s a 220-yard difference on the wind on a tee shot.

“Now when that kind of wind comes blowing it up across the golf course with traditional bunkers, the sand flakes out, it creates these little tornadoes in bunkers and you see the wind spinning in the sand. You see that sometimes on the other Bandon courses, particularly on Old MacDonald, to where you’ve actually seen it flying across the property.”

That type of wind damage makes it difficult for crews to keep the course in working order. And with Sheep Ranch’s amazing seaside views, there’s rarely a break from the wind.

“That requires that the maintenance crew goes out and actually waters the bunker to keep the sand inside the sand traps. If you don’t do that, all the sand blows out and you’re left with these hard-pan, exposed bottoms and that’s no good because then you’re constantly doing maintenance to the bunkers,” Lusk said. “You’re going to have drainage problems, you’re going to have sand blown all over your greens. It’s just a mess.”

Because of this, Coore and Crenshaw decided to look back into the past for an answer.

“They were looking at a way to try to not have the sand blow out so much from these bunkers and the easiest way to do that was to have no bunkers,” Lusk said. “So Bill Coore said that he looked back he and Ben Crenshaw looked back at an old book called ‘The Links,’ which is from the early 1900’s and I’m paraphrasing here, I don’t have the book in front of me right now, but it says that someday there will be a site with such blessed beautiful natural contours that you don’t need sand bunkers.

“And Bill Coore said if ever there was a chance to build that course, Sheep Ranch had those contours.”

Lusk noted that sand bunkers can be expensive to maintain and are often the first thing to show wear. It wouldn’t be surprising if this trend became more popular.

“You’re starting to see this with some other courses around the country,” Lusk said. “More and more people are experimenting with leaving out, if not all, then at least some bunkers, because bunkers are a maintenance nightmare and that adds to the cost of running a golf course.”