HOYLAKE, ENGLAND | Had you been in the sturdy clubhouse at Royal Liverpool last week, you would have heard two topics of conversation rising above all others. The first was the new 17th hole, known as Little Eye, and its ability to wreck a scorecard, a hole described in these columns earlier this year as being built for television. It is fair to say that opinion among those in the clubhouse was divided. Little Eye is not everyone’s favourite, not by a long chalk, and there is reason to believe it will be altered to be more to the members’ tastes in the coming weeks.
The other subject of conversation during the 151st Open Championship was bunkers, and by that I mean bunkers, not traps. All bunkers are traps but not all traps are bunkers. Think of traps as being any hazard that lie in wait to trap a golfer: grass bunkers, hollows, cops, sand bunkers, waste bunkers, water. Think of bunkers solely as depressions filled with sand. And for the moment, think only of sand bunkers that have revetted faces and thus are referred to as revetted bunkers. Revetted bunkers are those that have sods of turf laid in a horizontal line across the face, one line of sod on top of another.
To me they can be a cliché. They are a patch on an eye of the Mona Lisa, golf’s Mohican haircut or a course’s facial piercing or tattoo. For a while, they were one of the clichés of the modern game, as were longish par-4 finishing holes that curved from right to left and had water lapping the left of the fairway all the way to the green. The best example is the 18th at the TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, which may have started the trend, but for a time it seemed as though every new course had to have a finishing hole like this one.
They don’t just revet the face of a bunker but the sides and the back as well. How unnatural is that? Talk about overegging the pudding.
In the correct place, revetted bunkers have a purpose. Their origin, noted by Horace Hutchinson in the late 19th century, was to present a neat and tidy face of a bunker that might look straggly, sparse and unkempt. On links courses where the wind might blow more fiercely than on a sheltered, tree-lined inland course, a revetted bunker face was both necessary to stitch together the disparate ingredients that make up the face of a bunker – sand, soil, marram grass, bird droppings – and tidy up what would otherwise be straggly.
What has happened is in the dash to be à la mode, the authorities have gone too far. They have overclubbed. They don’t just revet the face of a bunker but the sides and the back as well. How unnatural is that? Talk about overegging the pudding.
Revetted bunkers require a considerable effort to be built, which is a cost clubs would rather do without. Nor are they particularly low maintenance when in place. Like many an aged person, they demand regular gussying up to remain visually at their best. And as was demonstrated in Thursday’s first round, they can create unplayable situations for golfers.
The steepness of the revetted faces causes balls that hit them to drop vertically and sometimes become nearly embedded at the foot of the face. Even Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm could not extricate their golf balls from revetted bunkers on the 18th in Thursday’s first round, and we had the fairly novel and not altogether enchanting sight of the world’s second- and third-ranked golfers, respectively, having to play out sideways or backwards.
Another disadvantage is that the steep faces of revetted bunkers encourage the sand in the base of a bunker to lie flat. Remember your geometry and your right angles and you’ll get the picture. A bunker with a more concave base would allow a ball to roll back into the bunker’s centre and be easier to extricate. Look at the photograph supplied to us by Andrew Thomson, son of Peter, who won the third of his five Opens at Hoylake in 1956, in a bunker during that championship.
Full marks to the R&A for their change in policy after Thursday’s first round and the way that greenkeepers were required to work through the night to raise the sand level in the bunkers and create a more concave base. Dare one say however, they should have thought of this before?
It is possible to upgrade bunkers without being faddish and revetting their front, back and sides. The estimable course architect Tom Doak did a brilliant job when in 2016 he got his hands on both courses at Woodhall Spa to refresh them. A friend who played there recently reported that on both the Hotchkin and the Bracken courses the bunkers were presenting a massive challenge and there was little revetting. Of course, Woodhall Spa is an inland course, and overly revetted bunkers look even more of an eyesore on courses miles from the windy wastes and undulations of a links course.
My point remains. Revetting, like discussions on sex, religion and rock and roll, has a place, and today it is much overused. Revetted bunkers? Sod ’em.
John Hopkins