59 reinterpret and reintroduce features outside of their original or natural state or intended purpose,” says Brandon Johnson of Arnold Palmer Design. “A good example is the use of the column or arch through architecture history. What, after all, is the purpose of a hollow non-loadbearing column on a building these days beyond pure ornamentation? At least the placement of sand outside a links course retained its purpose as an obstacle within the game. Its inclusion, along with other elements – rock, trees, water, artificial contour – aimed to have a strategic purpose.” If early inland golf courses were pretty basic, it was when the heathlands of Surrey and Berkshire, south and west of London, were discovered for the game in the 1890s and the very early twentieth century that the game first found a design vocabulary that worked away from the seaside. The heathlands were – mostly – sandy, so bunkers were not fundamentally out of place there as they might have been on clay-based inland courses. Be this as it may, the heathland revolution established the sand bunker, once and for all, as a key part of the course design template. It also saw what may be the first ever wholly bunkerless course, the Old course at Royal Ashdown Forest in Sussex, England, created in 1888. The par-three sixth at Royal Ashdown, known as The Island, is one of golf ’s most famous bunkerless holes – its forty-yard-long green is surrounded by hazards, a stream on two sides, and a gully on the others. “The heathlands share many of the same characteristics as the links, so it wasn’t difficult to make bunkers look natural there,” says Robin Hiseman of European Golf Design. “When it came to heavier sites it was a case of adapting Photo: Paul Severn The par-three fifth at Royal Worlington & Newmarket features a deep cavern of turf, fondly known as Mug’s Hole, next to the green
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