Erin Hills’ bunkers are true hazards at Open
Sand traps on course unfriendly
TOWN OF ERIN – It’s gotten to the point on the PGA Tour where bunkers no longer are considered hazards. Week in and week out, the sand is perfect and consistent — the same type, the same depth, filling the same saucershaped depressions.
Touring pros don’t give bunkers a second thought and sometimes even aim at them, especially around the greens, where smooth sand is more predictable than thick rough.
At the 117th U.S. Open, though, the bunkers are not friendly little cookiecutter sandboxes. They are raggedy-edged, irregularly shaped pits and cavities and most are to be avoided at call costs.
When architects Michael Hurdzan, Dana Fry and Ron Whitten designed Erin Hills, they wanted the bunkers to look like they were formed by nature through wind and water erosion. There are 35 to 40 of these so-called “erosion bunkers” among the 138 on the course
In other cases, where trees were removed, the architects simply left the holes, filled them with sand and let the fescue grow tall around the edges.
“I think (Alister) MacKenzie would have loved the bunkers,” Hurdzan said, referring to the famed British course architect who designed Augusta National and Cypress Point. “All that raggedy-edged kind of stuff, if you look back at those early MacKenzie (photos), that really kind of fits right in.”
No two bunkers at Erin Hills are alike in size or shape. It’s unlikely that anyone will play all 72 holes of the U.S. Open without having to hit a bunker shot from an awkward stance, so during practice rounds golfers practiced all manner of shots, sometimes with one or both feet out of the sand.
“They purposefully designed these bunkers to be penal,” said Mike Davis, executive director of the United States Golf Association. “You’ll see in these bunkers not only small nooks and crannies and crevasses, but you’ll also find more tilt to these things to where you oftentimes do not have a level lie in a bunker.”
Said Whitten: “Even in a fairly benign fairway bunker, you can have a sidehill-downhill lie. And these players are going, ‘What the hell is this?’ ” Is that fair? “You know, golf is not a fair game,” Whitten said. “You’re not supposed to be in bunkers. So I hope if Erin Hills stands for anything, it stands for the proposition that bunkers ought to be getting back to being hazards.”
The players also spent considerable practice time getting used to the type of sand in the bunkers. It’s not the fine white sand they encounter week to week on the PGA Tour. It’s bigger-grained brown sand, so they have to make adjustments in their technique for splashing balls out of it.
“It’s marvelous sand in these bunkers,” Davis said. “It’s very angular and it doesn’t wash away with big rains, which we like.”
A few players mentioned that there are tiny pebbles in the sand. When a flagstick is located near a bunker, the sand splashed onto the green could actually deflect putts around the hole.
“Well, aren’t you allowed under the Rules of Golf to brush away loose impediments?” Whitten said. “That’s why I’ve always carried a towel.”
The tall fescue rough was the subject of much of the pre-championship chatter about the course, which surprised Whitten. He thought more players would complain a bit about the severity of the bunkers.
That could change. The shots start counting Thursday.