49 Too pretty? BUNKER DESIGN Written by Adam Lawrence FEATURE Is the beauty of bunkering being over-emphasised at the expense of its function, asks Adam Lawrence. Golf design and construction has been transformed in the 30 years since Sand Hills (pictured) opened in the remote reaches of Nebraska. The way that courses built today look is worlds apart from the aesthetic that was prevalent only a couple of decades ago. The success of Sand Hills, and the courses that came after it – especially the behemoth Bandon Dunes development in Oregon – has meant that a wide open, somewhat linksy look, ideally with firm turf, and bunkers that are supposed to resemble natural sand scars now dominates golf development. Inevitably, there is work of a varying standard. Some sites are not as good as others; some construction crews are not as good as others; and, yes, some architects are not as good as others. But what has emerged in recent years is something different. Before the turn of the millennium, golf architecture was a minority interest. Online publishing was still in its infancy: YouTube, for example, was launched in February 2005. Social media barely existed. The first podcast had not yet aired. It was a different world. Fast forward 25 years, and the media market is completely different. There is a huge variety of golf design content available on any number of different platforms and the subject is, if not mainstream in golfing circles, certainly not the closed book it was back then. This is a wonderful thing for everyone involved in the golf architecture business. It was always the case that, when a great new course debuted, it would only be seen in the flesh, let alone played, by a tiny fraction of the golfing community. Now, that tiny fraction is massively outnumbered by those who have seen photographs of it. Numbers drive perception. Do they also drive trends in design and construction? A lot of architects and commentators say they do. Of late, there has appeared a (small but significant) number of courses where the design work seems Photo: Larry Lambrecht
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=