The majestic bunkers of Toronto Golf Club
Tweaked by Martin Hawtree in 2009
There’s no sweeter thing in golf than being blown away by the unexpected beauty of a golf course.
It’s tough for me to talk about such a majestic old course as Toronto Golf Club this way, as it was already a 9 out of 10 last time I played it over a decade ago. But it had since been masterfully renovated and tweaked by course architect Dr. Martin Hawtree in 2009.
The Englishman specializes in the restoration of Harry Coltdesigned courses in Europe and North America, and you can just ask the rest of my playing partners how much I fell in love with the work he did on what is known as one of Colt’s masterpiece designs. I never stopped taking photos of the incredible bunker work that was done.
On their own, and as strategically placed clusters lining fairways and greens, they were works of art. Club archives proudly boast of the complete freedom Dr. Hawtree was given in the reworking of the Toronto Golf Club layout, something that anyone who has hired a top notch interior designer, landscape architect or house architect knows all too well — leave them be and let them do their magic.
It’s hard to explain what makes a bunker a work of art. More than a specific shape or depth or colour and texture of sand, it’s the complete package, every element working together, that transforms a simple, ugly sandpit into a glorious greenside bunker.
It’s about shadows cast by the lips and faces of the bunker. It’s about how the grass is clipped or left to grow out long and gnarly on certain edges. Greens budgets, superintendent’s priorities, and staffing can dictate how majestic a bunker with good genes ends up looking day in and day out. But when well designed bunkers are maintained well, they become more like course guides than they do hazards.
I personally love holes where flashes of sand point you in the direction of where you should play and where you should not. What you need to lay up short of and what you need to carry.
Many golfers will tell you that they find it more difficult to aim at a flag in a sea of greenness than at a target with bunkers on its left and right side. Or that it’s easier to carve a drive around a dogleg if there’s a bunker giving visual perspective to the corner where the fairway turns.
The beauty of Martin Hawtree’s work at Toronto GC was simply how great the varied shapes and colours and depths made you feel as you walked the property. They were constant reminders that you were on an important layout; for why else would a course pay such close attention to its hazards, the very objects you were supposed to avoid.
Hitting it in a bunker is never a good thing for your score, but finding a few of these fair but sometimes nasty hazards over the course of four hours felt like it made my sensual experience of the course stronger. I’ve written before here about the power that the right waterviews and creek meanderings can have on your sense of peace and happiness while golfing.
The Toronto Golf Club bunkers made me feel the same way about top notch sand traps. It’s an interesting concept. What is supposed to be nasty can be the exact opposite in the right conditions, with the right frame of mind.
There’s got to be a life lesson in there somewhere.
Here’s to fall golf, and red leaves that stay out of our most gorgeous bunkers.
See you in the spring. Go Petes Go.