There’s nothing wrong with a little eye candy, but when it comes to bunkering, the mere suggestion of a nasty pit of despair is usually enough to make the golfer think.
I played two Florida golf courses recently that draw considerably on this technique, to delightful and devious effect.
The first is the restored Dunedin Golf Club north of Tampa. The 1927 Donald Ross design, like so many, had suffered from decades of benign neglect until the city realized what a gem it had, and hired Ross restoration expert Kris Spence to take the Scottish master’s field notes and drawings and bring them into the 21st century. Spence socked a home run the nearby Toronto Blue Jays (who take Spring Training in Dunedin) would be proud of, broadening out the Ross greens and re-situating dozens of bunkers that put varying amounts of pressure on nearly every full shot. Many of them are smaller than most might expect from Ross, and they play a clever game of peek-a-boo with the golfer. From certain vantages, the line of the sand is clearly visible. Other times, the steepness of a distant grass face is all a golfer has to indicate a sandy presence. The effect of this deliberate hide-and-seek is to subtly unsettle the golfer.
Nearly three hours down the west coast of Florida, in Naples, Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner achieved similar feats of sleight-of-sand at the private Kinsale Club, which opened in the closing weeks of 2024. Rather than Ross, Hanse & Wagner drew inspiration from C.B. Macdonald, Seth Raynor and the other figures who laid out the great golf courses of the Hamptons in New York. Shades of National Golf Links, Maidstone and more greet golfers at Kinsale, and once again, what is hard to see is often what you want to avoid. On just a 117-acre site, hide-and-seek bunkering adds old-school charm, engaging mystery and the desire to come back and try a few different tactics next time.
