5th Green Bunkering Pt 7

The past week has seen us make slow progress with work on hole 5. Bad weather, staff shortages and even a break-in at the greenkeeping complex have resulted in progress being slowed on the job that we had expected to have finished by now. So far we have completed the revetting work on the first two bunkers and around three quarters of the turfing has been carried out.

Some comments have been received about the depth and steepness of the revetted faces of the bunkers. I will deal with the depth issue first; sand still needs to be added to the new bunkers to bring it up to the finished level. In the case of the 2nd left hand bunker this amounts to a lot of material as this bunker floor is being raised by about a foot making the step in at the back of the bunker no more than about 10 inches. With regard to the steep angle of the revetted face, there have been requests to construct these at a 45 degree angle to the bunker floor. This would be inappropriate, revetted greenside bunkers should have an angle of between 60 and 70 degrees. This figure is arrived at for a number of reasons - it lessens the chance of sand coming to rest on the bunker face which ultimately kills the turf, it lessens the chance of a golf ball coming to rest on the bunker face which is a nightmare for golfer and greekeeper alike, it ensures that sand movement within the bunker is minimised as more protection is offered from the wind and finally a 60 degree angle of bunker face creates an appropriate penalty to the errant shot. The player always has the option of playing out of the bunker sideways or backwards if they feel unable to tackle the "steep" face directly.