American and British Golf Architecture

A Consideration Especially of the Pros and Cons of the Cross Bunker

BERNARD DARWIN

WHEN the English golfer returns from a visit to America, he is inevitably asked by his friends, "What are American courses like?" and "How are they different from ours?"

As a rule—and I include myself in this criticism—he does not answer very intelligently. "They're very good", he says, and then comes to a stop. After dragging his mental depths for some time, he goes on, "And the greens are closely guarded." Then the fount of inspiration is prone to dry up altogether, and he leaves his hearers very little the wiser.

Now, take the converse case of the American golfer asked a similar question about British courses. He is generally more explicit and puts his finger, I think, on the spot. He nearly always says that what he notices about our courses as compared with his own, is the very small number of cross hazards.

This is a true bill. For the moment we have gone a little astray, worshipping too much at the shrine of the lateral or flanking hazard. Not that America has not plenty of lateral hazards, but it has cross hazards as well; and really, for the life of me, I cannot see why the two cannot exist together, each supplementing the other in a joint effort to destroy us.

Iconoclasts nearly always go too far, and we have knocked down too many of those hideous, rectangular ramparts stretching across the fairway which were the idols of an earlier generation. It was really the fault of those who built them in such a supremely inartistic way. If they had made them better, we should never have knocked them down with such fanatical zeal. We ought to have remodeled, not destroyed them root and branch. When the golf boom came to England, courses were laid out by the nearest Scottish professional a capital golfer, and often a capital fellow but with rudimentary notions as to architecture. He built his walls of earth at regular intervals across the fairway, and then declared (or if he did not, then the Secretary and the local newspaper said he did) that those few muddy fields would make a course "second only to St. Andrews".

Storming at the Ramparts

AFTER a while, people got horribly bored with the ramparts. The fat old gentlemen said they were forever having to play short of them from the tee, and the slim, slashing young gentlemen said that they were forever driving into those meant to catch their seconds; and both classes united in saying that the ramparts were so high that they could never see what they were aiming at. Prophets of great eloquence arose, who preached the doctrine that any fool could hit the ball in the air, which is only half a truth, if it is one at all. There was a general crusade against the ramparts, and down they came. At the same time, there came one or two very skilful architects, disciples of those prophets we have mentioned, who raised the art of making lateral hazards to an extraordinarily high level. And so altogether, as is always apt to be the case in any reformation, the pendulum swung too violently in the opposite direction.

Let us now, as Mr. Chadband would say, "inquire, in a spirit of love" as to the merits and failings of the cross bunker. Admittedly, it is one very difficult to place for the tee shot. If it is far enough away from the tee to give the young slasher something to think about, it is quite outside the compass of the old gentlemen. Something can, indeed, be done by making the bunker diagonal in shape, and giving an advantage to the man who dares cut off the biggest chunk; but even this will seldom at once test the slim and appease the fat.

There are exceptions. Two of the finest and fairest carries from the tee that I know are at the third and seventeenth holes at the National. The cross bunker is likewise difficult to place for the second shot, for if it is to be carryable by the short drivers and so afford them any interest, then it may be at such a spot that the long driver, with the ground hard and the wind favoring, will put his tee shot into it, and call down fire from Heaven on the architect's head.

Giving the Golfers Pause

BUT it is not difficult—or not nearly so difficult—to place as a guard immediately in front of the green. I suppose even here some people will complain that they have to play short and are robbed of their fun, but it simply is not possible to make a course equally amusing for everybody. And there is no doubt of one thing: let a player be as good as he pleases, a big cross bunker at a really crucial moment, that he must get over and can't get round, makes him think. Sometimes it even makes him take his illustrious eye off the ball.

The odd thing is, that all the time we have been abolishing cross bunkers, we have possessed two or three holes with cross bunkers which were universally admitted to be admirable. To my mind, there is nothing like a good, yawning chasm guarding the eighteenth green; it keeps the pot of excitement boiling to the last; and three of our championship courses have such last holes. Westward Ho! with its black and oozy burn, Hoylake and Muirfield, with good deep old-fashioned bunkers that take a great deal of jumping, even by the very liveliest of balls.

Those bunkers have made brave men timorous. When Herd won his championship at Hoylake, he was so anxious to get over that bunker with his last shot that he went over the bunker, over the green, and very nearly over the garden wall beyond it. And the same bunker very nearly made tragic history in Taylor's case. It was in the qualifying rounds. The great man had done very badly, but had pulled himself together and seemed safe at last. He only had to do the hole in five to qualify; he hit a perfect tee shot, and was left with a simple iron shot to the green. But there was that brutal, bludgeoning, uneducated sort of bunker in the way, and the best iron player in the world gently plumped his ball into it. Well, he got out, holed a very nasty putt for his five, and then on the following two days ran away with the championship by a whole pocketful of strokes, but it was what the Duke of Wellington called the battle of Waterloo—" a demmed close-run thing"— and it makes me cold at the pit of the stomach to think of it even now.

American courses have some fine cross hazards to make formidable the eighteenth hole. The last hole at the Country Club at Brookline is not much to look at, with a flat polo ground to play across; but it is redeemed from mildness and dullness by the formidable bunker that guards the green. The eighteenth at the National, which I think the finest last hole in the world, has got a cross bunker to be carried in the second, though it is not close in front of the green.

Pine Valley has a really terrifying combination of bunker and water hazard. In wood, where Bobby Jones won his laurels, has, as I gather from pictures, a water hazard, and it was that which made his last shot against Cruikshank at once so daring and so glorious. If there had been only side hazards, that finish would never have gone down to history; but with the cross hazard, a man must often "put it to the touch to win or lose for all," and therein is the fun and the agony. Moreover, the cross hazard is there all the time. Supposing you do have to play short in two, you have still to get over in three. People talk as if all the interest had gone out of the hole when they cannot go for the long slash over with their seconds. My friends! have you never fluffed a short pitch into a bunker in front of your eminent noses? If not,you are exceptional.

In this question of cross hazards, it is difficult not to be a little influenced by the type of shot that one plays best, and likes best one's self: and so I take some little credit to myself for impartiality, because I am conscious of having no great ability to get the ball up into the air. People talk airily, as if it were a simple thing to do; but to hit a carrying brassey shot from an unflattering lie is anything but simple. It is a stroke that makes the flat sw'inger envious of such players as Vardon and Duncan, who with their comparatively upright swings can hit the ball high into the air with easy witchery, and make it fall lifeless on the green. Speaking as an essential scuffler, I hold that the art of playing golf in the air is not to be lightly esteemed.

Criticism of American Courses

SO far I have been rather belittling my own country's courses. Now let me take the other side for a moment. If I may criticize, I think that the cross bunker is just a little overdone on some American courses, so that the perennial high pitching approach becomes monotonous. I should like to see more holes giving scope for the running approach, to be struck at once delicately and firmly up to a plateau. It is a distinct golfing stroke, and can give, if well played, an exquisite thrill.

There is another point in regard to which there seems to me something of sameness in America: namely, in the rigid difference between the rough and the fairway. It is a defect to be found here also, and is one hard to eliminate from inland courses. On some of our great sea-side courses, such as St. Andrews and Rye,there is practically no definite fairw-ay, but bunkers and hazards in plenty; w'hich adds greatly to the gaiety of the play.