Where to leave the bunker rockets? This course designer has the ultimate answer

Like a seasoned one golf course architectForrest Richardson thinks a lot about the details of the game.

Among the topics he has been inclined to think about: the proper placement of bunker rocket.

If Richardson had his druthers, there would be no need for him to wrestle with this issue, because bunker rockets would not exist.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say they watered down the game,” Richardson says. “But they don’t do the best things for golf.”

One drawback, of course, is that they get in the way. Consider the incident Richardson witnessed last month while playing on a hotel walk Olympic Club in San Francisco. It was the kind of thing he’s seen more times than he can count. On the Lake Course’s par-3 15th hole, one of Richardson’s partners hit a foul shot that hung in a rake on the sloping face of a greenside bunker. When the player moved the racket, as he was entitled to do by the Rules of Golf, his ball stayed where it was, leaving him with a more challenging lie than he likely would have had the racket not been there.

Was there somewhere else the rocket should have been left instead?

As it happens, Richardson has done more than ponder this question. He has researched it, conducting a survey that may qualify as the most exhaustive exploration of bunker placement ever conducted. That was more than 16 years ago. Richardson first published the results in a 2008 article in Golfdom Magazine. Clearly, however, the issue has not gone away. And after last month’s appearance at the Olympic Club, Richardson was inspired to recirculate the article in his online newsletter. You can read it in full here.

In the meantime, here’s a look at his methodology and findings.

For the survey, Richardson focused on the three most common options for placing missiles: inside the bunker, outside the bunker, and partially inside (he chose not to consider more obscure alternatives, such as underground raked compartments, or those outside spike-shaped rakes that can be sunk into the ground like spears have long been fashionable, because the vast majority of courses do not use them).

Richardson then polled rules officials, course operators and other industry figures, asking them to assign letter grades — A, B, C, D and F — to eight categories of concern: game interference; the complexities of governance; golfer access; maintenance intervention; aesthetic; wear and tear on the rake; speed of play; and game traditions. Those grades were then averaged into an overall grade for each of the three placement options.

Not surprisingly, each option showed strengths and weaknesses. While the in-bunker option received excellent marks in “aesthetics” and “maintenance intervention” (an A in both categories because the rockets are mostly out of sight and don’t have to be moved for mowing), it was dropped in “decision.” complexities,” earning an F for all the funky things that can happen, such as balls hitting sliders in the sand and vice versa.

The out-of-bunker option, in contrast, got an A in “ruling complexity” because it rarely creates complicated decisions. But she was assigned a D in both
“maintenance interference” (robbery prevents mowing) and “traditions of the game” because, as Richardson wrote in his summary, the racket “has the potential to deflect a ball toward or away from the bunker, constituting an artificial impact on the game that can change the outcome of a game.”

There’s more. Much more.

Leaving racquets out of bunkers, Richardson’s survey found, makes it easier for players to catch them (a B grade for “access to the golfer”), but it’s hard on the racquets themselves, as they often end up lying on wet peat (grade D for “rake wear”). Not that leaving rockets inside the bunker is a great solution either. “Not just wet, but sandy,” Richardson noted. “Grade: C.”

You get the picture. The boy went deep.

When all the individual grades were tallied, the indoor and outdoor options ended up with the same overall grade: C+. The third option, partially in, referred to in the survey as the “leaning position,” performed best in most categories, earning an overall grade of B+.

Along with that note, Richardson offered guidance. “In this position,” he wrote, “the booty is placed in the bunker with the hoops down and the handle resting on the rim. Ideally, the handle will be a foot or less beyond the rim so that it can be gripped but not I place the hoops very high on the steepest slopes.” That way, he noted, the racquet has little contact with the ground (good for longevity), is mostly out of sight (good for aesthetics) and has little chance of interfering with a ball in play.

“There, you have a pragmatic assessment of bunker positions,” Richardson wrote. “Part science, part physics and part like Olympic gymnastics judges were responsible for the results.”

Or a strict high school teacher.

Although Richardson didn’t say it, he might as well have said it. Getting rid of rockets altogether would be the only way to get an A.