By Design – Issue 50 // Fall 2020

23 Photo: Kevin Murray The single bunker on the Road hole seventeenth at St Andrews dictates play on almost any shot to and around the green only from there can one realistically make a play for green. This bunker also sets up one of the most important leaves in golf. The short right and slightly more risky long left second shot options will avoid the bunker and leave a delicate pitch and putt for a par escape and joyous dash towards the home hole. The careless leave behind or around the bunker short will create confounding problems. My other favorite single bunker is on another famed seventeenth, at TPC Sawgrass. If the island green wasn’t enough, Pete Dye cleverly places a tiny pit on the island to stand watch over that tempting far right pin location and feeder slope for the more conservative line. In the book he authored with Mark Shaw, Bury Me in a Pot Bunker , Dye said: “When we finished the hole, the apple shaped green was slightly larger at twenty-six paces long and thirty paces wide. On the bottom of the apple was a single pot bunker and on the top a narrow stem leading to land.” Aside from the skinny access path, that tiny thumbprint bunker is the only place where you can miss the green and still find dry land. Then, you will be left with a terrifying shot from an awkward lie, trouble staring you in the face from all directions. It’s the same trouble you successfully avoided moments earlier, but now it’s back and poised for round two. Some say this is “Dye-abolical”, a sadistic joke from a master architect, but I tend to believe it’s a sense of humor, not persecution, that underlies this feature. • Brandon Johnson writes about the single bunker and three of his other favorite features on golf courses in the July 2020 issue of Golf Course Architecture . Read online at golfcoursearchitecture.net. “You will be left with a terrifying shot from an awkward lie, trouble staring you in the face from all directions”