A perfect example of what I've been blabbing about

Unbeknownst to you, or even me to a certain extent, I've had a case study in progress in the pot bunker on #17.  All season, in response to questions about the conditions of the bunkers and the sand, I've spoken about 'contamination' and 'runoff' and 'sand faces' and 'lack of drainage'. Right now, there is a perfect example of what I've been talking about that makes it easy to illustrate.

Each of the last two seasons, we have dug out #17 pot bunker, reshaped, and added fresh sand in an effort to make it somewhat playable.  Balls entering the trap have a tendency to roll all the way to the back, and we did this to minimize it.  The important point is that we have added brand-spanking new sand to this bunker this season, and most of you are familiar with what it looks like now-back to hard, contaminated, and mostly muddy.

The take-home message here is that the quality and consistency of the bunker sand is always directly proportional to the quality of the construction and drainage.  As far as construction is concerned, this bunker was "perched" up like a pimple as opposed to "dug out" like a crater.  Once traffic, maintenance, and constant sand splashing about added up, the edges began to erode.  With the buildup of sand, the edges were constantly trimmed back, exposing more and more soil on the face of the trap.  Now, with only a few good rains over the course of 1 season, you can plainly see in the pictures below that the sand is completely contaminated.     As far as drainage is concerned, there is none.  The trap will only drain as fast as the clay and soil beneath allow.  This makes for standing water that carries contaminants from below the sand as well.  All-in-all it's a losing battle.  If this trap is to get better, it needs to be rebuilt, not unlike many traps on the course.  Many members seem to think just continually adding sand will make all the traps just splendid.  Adding sand does help most bunkers for a limited time, but it is easy to see in this situation that's not the case. 

Below, check out the pictures.  You can see plainly (look at the bright patch of sand) what the sand looked like when it was put in around June 1st and what it looks like now after only one season.

The brightly colored spot is what the sand looked like fresh.  The bottom of the photo shows the color of wet sand, and above the bright spot is dry sand in the trap.  The color difference is dramatic wet or dry.  The new sand I used was actually dug out of #8 greenside trap on the same day at the same time.  So it has even spent a season in play-not brand new sand!

I made sure to put the fresh sand in between the wet spot in the trap.  You can see how much brighter it is than the dry and wet sand.  The consistency is also more soil-like than sandy.  This only took 1 season with the poor condition of the trap.

We hope to rebuild the traps on 17 this fall weather permitting.  With the help of our master plan architects and a professional shaper, we will work to create an attractive and more playable hazard that will make a great par-3 even better.