Sand in Bunkers

[FudgeNudger]

Right how much sand is meant to be in bunkers?? My course is a joke with the amount of beach sand it has in the bunkers!! It is impossible to get any sort of control out of them and sometimes impossible to even get out of them. Gonna have to book a flight to Bondi to get some practise in me thinks

 

[pokerjoke]

I dont think theres ment to be any paticular depth of sand.However its important that you able to read how much sand is in there and what type of sand.Also all bunkers are raked front to back so you will find deeper sand at the back of bunkers.I think the worst kind is solid wet sand an absolute nightmare,in fact some times its better to chip it out.

 

[USER1999]

For the pro's it is about 1/2" of powder on top of 1/2" of compacted.

Most golf courses don't do this.

It took 9 months work at The Grove to get the bunkers perfect for the WGC event. Most courses cannot afford this level of work.

Best bunkers I have played in were at the Belfry, Brabazon, which had 1/2" and 1/2", perfect.

 

[Curls]

At a local club I witness the greenkeeper drive his tractor into the sand with a "rakey type thing" on the back.

Surely that's compressing the sand down horribly? Is this technique ratified?!

 

[Mongoose]

The under layer needs some compaction, to give resistance, there's nothing worse than playing in a bunker where a load of sand has just been emptied into it. With good sand bunker play isnt that hard, most golfers can learn it fairly easily, the problem is near all of us play on courses where the bunker sand is not good, either the sand type itself, or the way its compacted, or not compacted. To me, thats an issue. You can hit a good approach, miss the green by a couple of feet and then have almost no chance out of the grotty bunker. Bunkers should be maintained properly to give a fair chance to the player, unfortunately for most courses bunkers are a very very low priority, which ruins many a good course.

 

[Region3]

At Woodhall last weekend I really struggled with them. It felt like there was about 4" of loose sand, and I couldn't get my club through it.
I was in 4 greenside. 1 was ok, 2 only just came out and 1 didn't bother at all.

Obviously just me. I've gotten used to the bunkers at my place.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

The problem at my course is that there isn't uniformed sand. Some seem to have very little sand above the base of the bunkers and others are quite deep. Clearly this causes vagaries about technique (how far behind/deep to hit) and the way it responds on coming out