No superintendent wants to bury his or her head in the sand when it comes to proper bunker maintenance.

Granted, greenkeepers walk a fine line between providing the best possible playing surface and remaining true to the USGA’s definition of a bunker—in which the key word is “hazard.” There is no need, however, for any superintendent to get trapped in unrealistic expectations about the way those hazards should function.

Short of stationing gremlins in the sand to lob errant golf shots back on the course, as Gale Hultquist, Certified Golf Course Superintendent at Wanakah Country Club in Hamburg, N.Y., jokes, greenkeepers have several tools at their disposal to help maximize bunker performance. The three primary pillars for success are good architectural design, astute sand selection and, most of all, a maintenance program that extends as much care to bunkers as to the greenest parts of the course.

Hands-On Maintenance

At Wanakah, one of the top clubs in the Buffalo, N.Y., area, the maintenance routine for its course’s 56 bunkers now includes raking them four or five times a week, edging them once a month and periodically checking sand depth.

The crew hand-rakes the fairway bunkers and power-rakes the greenside hazards. The sand depth ranges from six to eight inches across the bottoms to two to three inches on the bunker faces.

The crew strives to ensure that the sand is not too fluffy, which leads to “fried egg” lies, and to keep the sand clean. Dirty sand does not drain as well, and it contaminates the greens, Hultquist explains. 

Aesthetics are also important, he notes, so the color of the sand should remain consistent throughout the course.

Bunker performance expectations have increased through the years, says Paul Hoarston, Golf Course Superintendent at Highland Country Club in Ft. Thomas, Ky., because of “the Augusta syndrome.” 

“People see it on TV,” he says. 

“They’re perfect, and that’s what they want.” However, Hoarston adds, “It’s a hazard. It should not be that easy.”

His crew rakes the 31 bunkers at Highland, an 18-hole private facility, about three times a week with hand rakes only, touching them up as needed. They also mow around the bunkers weekly, but day-to-day maintenance practices change, depending on crustation.

The severity of the banks around the 97 bunkers at Brookside County Club, an 18-hole private facility in Canton, Ohio, keeps the crew from using mechanical rakes.

“We rake them by hand every day,” reports Golf Course Superintendent Kent Turner. “We mow the banks weekly and edge them probably about every three weeks.” None of the bunkers have liners, he says, and the same four crew members rake them each day. “They’re good at it,” he notes. “They take the time to pull out any weeds.”

The same two crew members then generally mow the banks with a weed eater. “There’s certainly an art to that,”  Turner says. “They can make it look like it was done with a lawn mower.”

At Annandale Country Club, an 18-hole private property in Pasadena, Calif., the maintenance crew hand-rakes the 84 bunkers every day, and edges all of them every couple of weeks by hand as well.

“We’ve gotten away from the mechanical,” explains Certified Golf Course Superintendent Ed Kutt. “We’re trying to get a more ‘wispy’ look to the edges.” 

This approach, begun after the bunkers were renovated last year, has resulted in a more authentic look that better follows the original architecture of the course, which was built in 1906, Kutt says.

Annandale’s is another crew that strives to maintains bunker consistency by eliminating the possibility of “fried egg” lies, ensuring that furrows are not too deep, and preventing lips from forming, Kutt adds.

Drainage and keeping edges properly trimmed and drainage are the chief concerns in maintaining bunkers, says Wanakah’s Hultquist. 

It is important to rake sand often. Dirty sand does not drain as well, and it contaminates the greens.

To help with these goals, about 75 percent of Wanakah’s bunkers have liners. The bunkers that have steep faces and experience heavy washouts are lined, but not the fairway bunkers. Crew members must guard against snagging the liners when they power-rake those that have them, Hultquist notes.

“They’re not perfect,” says Hultquist of the liners. “They do keep the washouts to a minimum, and they do keep the sand clean.”

Making the Grade

Sand selection is another factor that helps to keep bunkers in top form.

“The right sand is very important. I can’t stress that enough,” Hultquist says.

Wanakah’s tournament-grade angular sand is not too fluffy, he says, and does not shift beneath the golfers’ feet.

“The proper sand gradation is very important,” he adds. “You want the sand to pack a little bit. You don’t want it to pack too much.”

The bunkers at Highland CC have a combination of two types of coarse, tour-grade silica sands. The angular particles keep the sand compact and “balls sit up better,” says Hoarston.

If the sand is too fine, he adds, the bunkers will collapse in a washout. “The sand certainly makes a difference from a playability standpoint,” he says.

The subangular sand in Annandale CC’s bunkers is a mix of coarse and fine grains, reports Kutt. Fifty percent of the sand is coarse, he explains, while 25 percent of the particles are medium and 25 percent are medium-fine.

“It does pack a little bit,” Kutt says, to create a firm surface.

Brookside CC maintains a depth of four to six inches of pro-angle sand in its bunkers.

“It doesn’t wash out, and it stays pretty firm,” notes Turner. “We rake them often, to help out the high handicapper.”

Drastic Do-Overs

Highland CC completed a renovation of its greens and bunkers last year, in a process that was carried out over two seasons. Although the course added some bunkers in the ‘80s, Hoarston notes, the property, built in 1915, had never renovated the hazards before.

“A lot of the green banks and bunker banks had changed so drastically over time,” he reveals.

When several other local clubs were renovating their bunkers, he reports, Highland personnel thought the time was right to present the idea to the club’s Board of Directors. “We saw the impact it had on the appearance of the other courses,” Hoarston reports.

The property renovated one bunker first, so members could see the merits that a renovation project could have on the entire course. Once the go-ahead was given for the full project, the renovation occurred primarily during the off-season in the late fall and early spring, to minimize disruptions to play.

To complete its bunker renovation project, Annandale CC shut down its course from January until November of last year. The course now boasts “Billy bunkers,” Kutt says, named in honor of Billy Fuller, a golf course consultant and former Superintendent at Augusta National Golf Club who developed the construction process that was used.

In a departure from building bunkers by digging holes and filling them with sand, Kutt explains, Billy bunkers consist of a two-inch gravel layer that is covered with geotextile materials and topped with sand. The new bunkers are thus better prepared to prevent contamination, washout and water runoff.

Brookside CC renovated its bunkers four years ago, to make them more uniform in style. The renovation was part of a larger project, through which a new irrigation system was added and tees were rebuilt. The course was closed during the six-month project, Turner reports.

At Wanakah CC, the bunker renovation process has been ongoing, with about two-thirds of the bunkers being redone in the last 10 to 12 years, in accordance with the club’s master plan. 

“Over the years, the bunkers have changed a bit,” notes Hultquist. “They’ve gotten bigger. You have to be careful when you edge.”

All of the bunkers are being reshaped at the vintage Donald Ross course, which was built in 1899 and redesigned in 1925, to return them to the architect’s original interpretation. 

The property still has 15 to 20 bunkers to renovate, Hultquist says, and it would like to add more.  “It’s an ongoing process,” he says. “I don’t think you’re ever done with bunkers.”