From David Owen, Golf Digest:

http://www.golfdigest.com/story/why-we-should-do-away-with-bunker-rakes

Why We Should Do Away With Bunker Rakes

Golf, much more than other sports, is a game of good and bad luck. A great drive rolls into a divot: bogey. A lousy drive bounces off a boundary stake: birdie. Such unpredictability isn’t a defect. The tension between happy accidents and undeserved disasters helps to turn mere hackers into obsessives and philosophers. To make tennis comparably thought-provoking, you’d have to shift the lines during rallies and randomly lift and lower the net.

Yet golfers complain. Instead of savoring the game’s sublime inconsistency, we yearn for courses as predictable as tennis courts. We grumble when greens aren’t flawless, when fairways aren’t uniformly carpet-like, when sand is either too fluffy or not fluffy enough. A friend of mine once skulled an explosion shot, then slammed his wedge against his bag and cursed the greenkeeper’s crew for having failed to undo the effects of the previous day’s hard rain. Tour pros are even more finicky. If the sand in one trap isn’t indistinguishable from the sand in every other, they gripe.

Complaints about “unfair” bunkers are especially contrary to the spirit of golf: aren’t hazards supposed to be hazardous? On TV, the standard greenside-bunker shot is about as thrilling to watch as a two-foot putt. You know the guy is going to spin it close, and he knows he’s going to spin it close -- otherwise, he wouldn’t have yelled “Get in the bunker!” when his ball was in the air. Sand’s function in a tour event is often just to make the surrounding grass seem troublesome.

There’s a simple remedy: follow the example of Pine Valley, the legendary New Jersey golf club, which for decades has been listed at or near the top of nearly every ranking of the best courses in the world. Pine Valley has many, many bunkers -- some small, some large, some soft, some hard some coffin-shaped, some bottomless, some seemingly miles across -- but no rakes. The club’s maintenance regularly smooths everything out, but, if your ball ends up in a footprint (or behind a rock or under a cactus), that’s your tough luck, and you deal with it. As you should.

Rake-free bunkers would make televised golf a lot more interesting to watch. They would even be good for choppers like you and me. Pristine, consistent bunkers are expensive to build and maintain. Why not let a course’s sandy areas take care of themselves, and spend the savings on something more obviously beneficial, like cutting back overgrown trees? Most golfers, who can’t hit sand shots anyway, wouldn’t notice a difference. (That guy I mentioned earlier skulls balls from well-conditioned bunkers, too.) Everyone else either would learn an arsenal of useful new shots or would get better at doing what bunkers are supposed to make golfers want to do: stay out of them in the first place.

Bees in Bunkers

From the Common Questions page of this blog:

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY BEES IN THE BUNKERS?


There are many common species of solitary bees that nest in the ground. Solitary bees construct individual nest tubes, each with its own opening.


They often nest in large congregations with many nesting holes arranged very closely together.

Ground nesting bees generally prefer nesting in areas with morning sun exposure and well drained soils containing little organic matter ... like bunker faces. Tunnels are excavated in areas of bare ground or sparse vegetation and damp soils are avoided.


Solitary bees rarely sting.

Spring Startup

Some of the seasonal staff have returned and are getting both courses ready for play. Along with course cleanup and filling stump holes on the North, we are preparing all of the bunkers for play, starting on the North Course. We should finish those by this weekend and will start on the South bunkers next week.

Course Update

The Michigan Amateur preparation went well. We got .40" of precip last night which softened things a bit but it was very welcome. With the South Course closed today, we can do a lot of course maintenance. Here is our plan for today:

• Hydroject aerifiy several greens.
• Spray all South fairways with fungicide.
• Check irrigation.
• Work in problem bunkers: adjusting sand depth.
• Routine Monday mowing maintenance.
• Cart path repairs throughout course.

Hydroject #11 green South

Checking sand depth, right bunker #9 green South

Short Game Bunkers

Renovation of these bunkers is on track. Today we verified drainage and installed the gravel in the drain lines, sand goes in tomorrow.

Short Game Bunkers

The Short Game Practice Facility was built following the 2004 Ryder Cup and opened in the spring of 2005. The sand based greens were seeded with A1 & A4 bentgrass. The facility was constructed on the site of an old golf course maintenance waste site that included bottles, cans, boulders, asphalt and old tree stumps.

Some of that refuse - through frost heaving soils - is finding its way to the surface: we are finding broken pieces of glass in the bunkers.

We are taking delivery of sand and next week will begin removing existing sand, lining the bottom of the bunkers to prevent any further invasion of refuse and refilling the bunkers with new sand.

Course Update 4/6/2012

• The North bunkers are finished, we start on the South bunkers today.
• North greens aerification is 4/16.
• Both irrigation systems are pressurized.
• Greens are being mowed as needed, with the frost the turf growth has almost stopped.
• All crabgrass preemergent applications are finished.

There will be frost tomorrow morning, therefore play will be delayed until mid-morning.

Bunkers

We begin bunker preparation next week. There are 135 bunkers on the South and 97 on the North. That makes a total of about 232,000 square feet of sand, so it takes 1-2 weeks to get everything back in order from the winter. The South are hand raked and the North are raked by hand and also with a machine.

After May 1st, when more seasonal staff arrives, the bunkers on both courses will be raked on a more routine basis.

Bunker #11 Fairway

Today we finished the shaping on the new bunker on #11 fairway. Bryce Swanson from Rees Jones' office was here to approve the final look and to paint the bunker line and the new fairway edge.

It looks great and the plan is to install irrigation this week and sod at the beginning of next week.

Drainage

The last of the North Course bunkers to get drained, number two green, were done this past week. This was part of the North bunker and drainage project we undertook last fall. We simply ran out of time and weather at the end of the year so we finished them this spring.

North Bunker Progress

Sure and steady. The guys are doing a great job ... and we think we can be finished by the end of this week or next week for sure.

Bunker Renovation North Course

The continuation of our North Course bunker project began today on #14 fairway. In order to get the drainage in we had to remove 2 Spruce trees that were already in decline. Once 14 fairway is complete, we'll move to #11 green.

Bunker #4 Green South

The floor was raised about 18" and the sides reshaped to improve access. We will add sand and finish today.

Bunker #4 Green South Course

The bunker behind #4 green on the South is steep and access is difficult. The Green Committee has recommended and the Board has approved raising the floor in this bunker. It will have the effect of lessening the degree of slope on the sides making it easier to get in and out. We start this in-house project this week.

Bunker Work

Today we began working in bunkers: pushing sand, cleaning debris etc. With a total of 232 bunkers on 2 golf courses, it will take 2 - 3 weeks to get through all of them.