Who would have thought bunker rakes would be such a controversial topic.
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DUBLIN, Ohio — Jack Nicklaus has some things in common. One is that traps (I hope you’re sitting down) should be penalizing. He doesn’t like to hear players tell balls in the air, “Go to the bunker!” In 2006, he had the bunkers on his big course here, Muirfield Villagefurrowed, an old Oakmont look, little lines of grooved sand. The players were not amused.
Well, we live in different times and bunker maintenance is one of the hot topics in golf. Earlier this week I wrote an article who mentioned two good golf courses that don’t have bunkers and rakes. One is Valley of the pinesin southern New Jersey. There were never any bunker rakes there. The other was the course owned by the village of Bellport, on the south shore of Long Island. Bellport, like many courses around the world now, no longer requires rakes out of respect for the pandemic. One less thing to spread the virus.
The response to the piece was overwhelming. I received several emails saying they supported my position, that golf would be improved with the complete elimination of bunker rakes.
Colin Sheehan, the Yale golf coach, wrote that he studied more than 1,500 scorecards dating back to before World War II, and not one of them mentioned a rake. Plenty of references to smooth footprints and probably divots, but none to a rake. You won’t find a single photograph of Bobby Jones raking his own bunker.
An example, courtesy of Coach Sheehan: “Level Footprints in Bunkers.” Any football-style side kick will do.
Several readers have noted that rakeless golf is faster. One of my colleagues in the newsroom supports the idea of playing without a rake, while pointing out that the course conditions would be fairer for beginners than for those who come later. Well, Tiger Woods has given a general answer to this question, which I will have the opportunity to return to in due course.
Gary Purdum of the Country Club of Landfall in Wilmington, North Carolina, wrote that “if we want to do away with rakes, I think we need to rethink the type of sand we put in the bunkers. We need a heavy, coarse material that packs well, not a bright, fluffy white powder.”
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I just checked out Landfall Country Club in Wilmington, North Carolina, Michael Jordan’s hometown. Forty-five holes! Sounds like a busy morning for Mike. It looks like a rake’s place, though. Perfect traps are part of country club life.
This move, I must realize, is a nudge. You’ve probably seen the bumper sticker that says, “I’d Rather Be Driving a Titleist.” It’s funny. But check this out: “Stop Over-Maintaining Golf’s Traps NOW.”
I realize that this movement will need some high-level help to get started. Imagine, if you will, Tiger and Rory, to name two good bunker players, joining the cause.
I asked Tiger if he could imagine a world without rakes and traps.
“I don’t know,” he said. During the pandemic, he said, “on my home course, at Medal“If guys are in a footprint or a previous hole blast that one of the groups in front of them was in, we just knock it over and move it out of there and then continue playing. I don’t know if that works at the elite level. What would golf course maintenance look like without rakes? What would it look like for us (Tour players) versus guys like you who play golf? We’re used to raking bunkers. It would be a lot different.”
To get Rory in the mood, I asked him if he had ever played golf as a kid on courses without rakes. I have played on Scottish courses where the bunkers are bunkers. Like at Brora, near Dornoch, you can see sheep hiding in the bunkers on the course, taking a break from the wind. The bunkers and the sheep were there before the first golfers.
“As a kid I never played a golf course without a rake,” Rory said. “At my local golf course in Hollywood it was very important to replace divots, fix pitch marks, rake bunkers and practice good course etiquette. It was kind of ingrained in us.”
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I was hanging on every word. The whole room was silent.
“Playing golf these days, with the little foam things in the cups and no rakes and stuff like that, it probably speeds up the game. If you’re in a footprint, you pull it out and you splash yourself. If anything, it probably makes recreational golf a little faster, which I support. So yeah, look, extraordinary times call for somewhat extraordinary measures in golf, and if that means no rakes and no touching the flagstick, then that’s fine with me.”
I went there: would you, Rory McIlroy, be ready to join the movement, to put an end to this madness, to send the many rakes of golf to the gardeners of the world?
“No,” Rory said, “I won’t. You’ve got the wrong target.”
OK, this is going to take some work.
Some have pointed out that rakes make golf fairer and that the absence of rakes in the traps would make golf less fair. Your ball could end up in a hoof print, in a heavy foot print.
Tiger addressed this very important topic head on. I asked him whether he considered golf to be a fundamentally fair or unfair activity.
“I don’t think any sport is fair,” he said.
I consider him undecided.
You can contact Michael Bamberger at [email protected].
