Meaningful Selection and Placement of Hazards

History has shown there are too many hazards in the world of golf architecture. Albert Tillinghast and Alister MacKenzie made separate careers by consulting clubs to remove extraneous bunkers. Operators, owners, and players alike bemoan the proliferation of hazards, particularly sand bunkers. Why? Because most hazards originate less from a need to challenge and more as means of penalty and aesthetic. These trends damage golf architecture as design to appear as a 'paint by numbers' ideal supposedly appealing to the masses.

The irony is that the masses are not the true golfing masses, but the industry experts who have turned a humble sport into big business, expanding the game's appeal to a golfing public at an increasing cost. Returning to the strategic roots of the game through meaningful selection and placement of hazards may rescue golf from the masses and return it to the golfers in a more affordable and enjoyable way.

In order to discuss selection and placement, let us first define a hazard as it relates to golf architecture. A hazard is any device challenging the golfer in the attempt to overcome an opponent, par or otherwise. The biggest mistake today's designers make is to incorporate hazards to punish the golfer. The biggest mistake today's designers make is to incorporate hazards to punish the golfer. In practice, I utilize hazards primarily to challenge the golfer, not to penalise. One should never introduce a one-dimensional hazard with the duty of penalty.

What constitutes meaningful selection of a hazard? People first associate sand and water when discussing the virtue of a hazard. Yet there are other devices which summon the role of hazard. Hazards vary in degree of penalty, with water and out-of-bounds being the most damaging, and grass rough being the most benign.

Sand bunkers are the most popular and excessive hazard. They effect more penalty and aesthetic than challenge, and come in many shapes and sizes from the small pot Walter Travis favoured, to the large waste bunkers fashioned by Pete Dye. Dye often balances waste bunkers with pots typically to challenge the stronger golfer more so than the less skilled.

Moguls, mounds, or hillocks are relatively modern hazards utilised by many an architect. Often they are utilised to accentuate aesthetics, yet create many difficult lies and stances for the golfer. Today, architects utilise mounding less for strategy and more for framing or screening outside views, creating shadows, or in attempts to keep stray shots in play. Nonetheless, efforts to corral missed hits can backfire. Wayward golf shots can just as easily be deflected further into the woods, water, or out of bounds.

Conversely, mounds can be more effective hazards in challenging golfers to attempt a more daring shot. Mounds can conceal specific parts of a fairway or green, requiring a golfer to place a shot more precisely so as to gain advantage for the next. George Thomas used intervening mounds to differentiate alternative strategic routes for a golf hole. These features would help define the bolder approach.

Similar to hillocks are grass hollows and swales. Grass hollows and swales define a plateau fairway or green. They can also make targets appear more elevated or further away than the lay of the land would dictate. Donald Ross often utilised hollows and swales as the more challenging hazard around greens. A golfer may shy away from a sand bunker as a defence mechanism, only to realise that playing closer to that hazard would result in an easier recovery than from the grass hollow. Hollows and swales incorporated into a green approach can create exciting shotmaking opportunities, especially on long par-4s and par-5s. Not only is accuracy and length important, but also the ability to control trajectory, bounce, and roll to negotiate these approaches.

Mounds and hollows are great strategic features that should be created as a single element. Both hollows and hillocks help define each other in nature. As landforms are created, the material from a hollow migrates to an adjacent area creating a mound. In nature, erosion creates an inherent balance of cut and fill, replicating the natural wave patterns of broader, sweeping hollows by more acute high points.

Rock outcroppings are natural hazards that create much heartache from unfriendly bounces. Rock should only be utilised where naturally found. Any attempt at artificial creation for strategy's sake should be avoided. Rock is part of the natural framework of golf courses in the north-eastern United States, and deserts of the west. One would scarcely find outcroppings in the sandhills of North Carolina or the marshes of Forida.

Hazards also come in vertical form. Structures are rarely considered legitimate hazards, yet architects have been known to leave old chimneys in sand or make an occasional windmill a focal point. Who can deny the Old Course Hotel at St. Andrews is not a formidable hazard for someone standing on the seventeenth tee? Trees are certainly hazardous, whether left in the middle of a fairway, or as woods defining a penal runway strategy for a golf course such as Sahalee in Washington State, home of the 1998 US Professional Golfers Association (USPGA) Championship.

Unfortunately, trees today render many other hazards ineffective strategic elements. Many sand bunkers are left between trees and targets. Hazards that were once focal points are now grown over by oaks and viewed as simple annoyances. As more trees are unwittingly planted on golf courses, it results in holes absent of strategic value. This tendency does not challenge the majority of golfers, yet is favoured by the typical professional who views challenge as simply keeping the ball down the chute each time.

One hazard not to be ignored, but often undervalued, is simple undulation or slope. Undulation is a wonderful design tool, which can dictate many strategic options and create shotmaking opportunities, though not unduly penalise the less skilled golfer. Shotmaking is the ability of a golfer to be creative in the face of architectural challenge and to control the flight of the golf ball. The best way an architect promotes shotmaking is in the shaping of the land, challenging golfers to shape shots - draws, fades, low runners, high, soft shots - in response.

Undulations can isolate a specific part of a fairway providing golfers a better angle for the next shot, an unobstructed path to the target, or a shorter route to the green. Golfers may gain an elevation advantage providing better views. Undulations as hazards can call upon challenging placement of shots to avoid other more penal hazards. The essence of a Redan hole is to utilise the undulation of the land in front of the green to avoid sand on both sides of the approach and properly control the correct bounce and roll to the target. As a challenging hazard, undulation can be a great equaliser when designing a golf course playable for all, unlike sand or water, which penalise the less skilled golfers to excess.

Meaningful selection of hazards depends primarily upon the lay of the land. The ground always determines what hazard I introduce, and often creates the strategy of any given golf hole. Ridges, saddles, plateaux, hollows, water, and wetlands are among the primary natural features to be utilised when designing a hole, whether strategic, penal, or heroic. These features help develop a golf course routing, ensuring naturally appearing strategic character. They act as hazards themselves, or become the framework for introducing sand bunkers, grass hollows, or undulation. Natural rises in the land may accommodate a well-placed sand bunker. This is an ideal that Donald Ross and others utilised often, creating plateau greens and setting sand bunkers naturally within the slopes. Using the land as a starting point for strategy and placement of hazards will always ensure variety in design from hole to hole and course to course. As course designer, Charles B. MacDonald noted: 'Variety is not only the spice of life, but is the very foundation of golfing architecture. Diversity in nature is universal.

In practice, if the lay of the land does not lend itself to natural hazards, or requires such manipulation to fit a hazard into the hole, then it is best left out of the equation. One should redefine a particular strategy before forcing that strategy onto the ground. Another relevant point is the need to avoid blind hazards. Blind targets are sometimes acceptable, yet blind hazards do not naturally fit a golf hole. If we obey the lay of the land in selecting the type and placement of hazards, we can avoid inappropriate design.

Golf architect George Thomas wrote: 'strategy of the golf course is the soul of the game'. Meaningful placement of hazards certainly reflects this observation. From a strategic standpoint, I incorporate hazards as motivators for thought and choice, rewarding smart play. The best location for a hazard is where the golfer would normally place a shot. A client once remarked as we were discussing renovation that everywhere I proposed a sand bunker is where he always plays. Exactly. When a hazard is located in such a way, it forces the golfer to ponder avoiding the hazard or risk bringing it into play to gain reward.

All great golf strategies place the majority of hazards along the most direct flight line, as that is where hazards intuitively fit. Early American course architect, Max Behr, summarizes this ideal best: ' The direct line is the line of instinct, and we wish to make a hole interesting we must break up that line and create the line of charm'.

One sand bunker off-centre from the middle of the fairway can be more effective than many bordering the same hole, challenging those so inclined with many options. This strategy provides open, less penal areas to complement this hazard, and allows the less skilled golfer a chance for recovery if needed.

Unfortunately, architects do place multiple hazards away from the direct line of flight in an attempt either to toughen up the golf hole, or for aesthetic notions forgetting the simple challenge in executing a golf shot. This scenario provides only one choice for the golfer. When golfers hit a shot off target and find these hazards, problems compound the playing situation. sand bunkers bordering both sides of a fairway are much more troublesome for the less skilled, much less challenging for the more skilled, and quite costly to build and maintain.

In the end, a hazard should not penalise, it should challenge. Strategy helps determine the virtue of a hazard, yet nature will always act as a point of balance. If a hazard does not naturally fit into the layout for strategy's sake. In this instance, an alternative hazard may be considered, or no hazard at all. With these philosophies constantly in the forefront of architects' minds, golf can recapture its roots and ensure long-term success.

Originally featured in Golf Architecture: A Worldwide Perspective - Volume One, a book compiled by Paul Daley.