Horrible Bunkers

Only one comment.... that's why they are called hazards.  It may be frustrating, but nothing says that a hazard has to be consistent or pristine - quite the opposite.  It would seem to me that it just gives you more incentive to do whatever you can to avoid them (see the recent thread on course management).

By the way, I've played public courses my whole life, so I know where you're coming from.  I just never let it bother me.

All the time here in Calgary.

Sometimes it is literally impossible to get the club under the ball - blade after blade.

Gets frustrating as hell - if they are truly bad my golf buddies and I will take a drop without penalty out of the bunker in the rough

This is pretty standard for public courses here in the NW. Exactly as described, with the addition of rocks. I can pick shots out with the 60* some times and hardly even disturb the sand...

It can happen even at a private course. With all the other improvements this year, there was no money left in the budget for more sand. They finally worked their magic and gave us nice fluffy greenside bunkers - only to have it rain at least once a day for weeks to pack it back down.

Its pretty funny because the public course I play at that has the cheapest green fee's in the area has the nicest bunkers.  It also seems like it gets more business than any of the other ones and everyone I talk to there loves it...I wish more courses would realize they might get more business if they dropped their green fee's a bit.

You should see the bunkers at my home course. You could easily mistake them for a man-made lake.

If the courses you play have really bad hard bunkers, you might want to think about checking your wedges.  The more bounce, the harder its gonna be to get out of a hard packed bunker.  Maybe look into wedges with less bounce if you plan on playing bunkers with really hard sand.  I have actually putted out of bunkers like that in some situations......

i made this post a while back:

Bunkers are one of the most pricey items to build/maintain on a golf course. Under the most extreme circumstances (that is, setting a course up for tournament conditions all year around) a course would spend hundreds of thousands on labor costs alone to maintain bunkers.

This is obviously an extreme circumstance, so here's something a little more realistic (still pricey, nonetheless).

So, given that the average course spends $261,500 on course maintenance, and 10-20 percent is on bunkers (we'll say 15% for the sake of argument), roughly $40,000 is spent on bunker maintenance yearly. Pretty pricey.

I absolutely get what you are saying there but when I get in a bunker that I couldn't get out of with a back hoe This hazard has now destroyed my round.  Luckily my course doesn't have many, because some days it is like hitting off cement.  My ball doesn't even make a line from where it entered to where it is now.  And I think that by raking it I have just made it worse because it leaves groves in the bunker now because it is so hard.  If I could play on those beaches that they do on the PGA I could be a much better bunker player.

we have several courses around here that just turned them into grass bunkers instead of keeping them up.  They are usually pretty severe with deep ruff, and harder to get up/down from than a regular sand bunker.

No sand in the dirt/gravel traps where I play either.

Why don't we just not fix ball marks on greens or replace divots while we're at it?  After all, nothing says those two things have to be done, either.

Sorry but your statement is just silly.  There's a big difference between a hazard and a putting green.  If you can't tell the difference then.....

I've played courses (Fossil Trace in Golden, CO is one) with what some would call beautiful sand, but they can still be just as punishing as a bunker with little or no sand.  When you have a 50-50 chance of being buried anytime you hit a bunker, I find it far more frustrating.  And being buried on a slope where the ball is likely to be 8"  or more above or below your feet is a nightmare shot.  Give me a bare hardpan bunker any day over that.

I believe the laws of golf state that munis must have a hard pan floor and the front wall be soft enough to stick a ball along with the rocks.

It may also be illegal to rake out foot prints?

Fixing ball marks is defiantly a no-no!

The bunkers at our club are the same: thin and dry.  It's basically a one-stroke penalty if you hit in one because they are so difficult. I'm learning how to deal with it (had two sandies in a row the other day) but avoidance is definitely the best policy.

I understand where you are coming from. A hard packed, thin bunker is one place where having a low bounce wedge helps. If the sand is packed super tight I will typically use my 60* wedge and play it like a normal bunker shot. I do enter the sand closer to the ball than I normally would, but I have to make sure I take a solid, firm swing to make sure I get into the sand with the leading edge.

That shot works most of the time... it still won't compensate for rocks though, lol.