TULSA — Bunkers on the PGA Tour are often only a danger in name. Gone are the days when bunkers were glorified as sandboxes, and good lies were a reward rather than an expectation.
Modern bunkers are pearly white oasis that provide players with a blank canvas to handle the ball however they want. They’d rather be there than rough.
Except this week’s PGA Championship.
The Southern Hills bunker caught the players’ attention earlier this week. The sand, known as the Tour Signature, comes from Ohio and is darker and more pebbled than the bright white powder bunkers on the PGA Tour. On Wednesday, Ian Poulter took to Instagram to shed light on the difficulties caused by the very large number of pebbles.
“This week you’ll see some balls coming out of a bunker that won’t have any spin due to the coarse and fine gravel-type sand,” he wrote. “You have small rocks between the ball and the face, which Makes it very inconsistent. Avoid the bunker at all costs. It’s even worse if you short yourself.”
He also posted a photo of a clearly worn clubface, apparently the result of one of the cobblestones being squashed between the clubface and the golf ball.
“All the bunker shots get hot — the sand is a lot quicker than I thought,” Woods said after a 4-under 74. Sand, however, is here with the same championship he faced when he won the PGA in 2007.
“It’s been like this all week, especially if you’re getting up in areas that aren’t sloped. I’ve had a couple of those balls in those areas. It’s like, ‘Is there a lot of sand here? No, how do I play?’
All of the bunkers at South Mountain have been refurbished since Woods won the 2007 PGA. The saucer-shaped Augusta-style bunker has been replaced by a sprawling old-fashioned trap shaped almost like a goo. The outline and appearance of the outside of the bunker is different, but the interior has not changed.
“When we worked on this project with Jill [Hanse] With Jim Wagner, we actually took the sand out and washed it, basically washed the dirt out of it,” said South Hills golf director Cary Cosby. “We’ve been trying to make sure there’s no clogging lie — we put the sand Make it hard so the ball doesn’t get clogged. There are no lies on Thursday, and neither will Friday. “
Matt Fitzpatrick knew early on that he was going to have a different test this week and adjusted his gear accordingly.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of sand in the bunker,” he said after a 68. More on all fairways. I changed the wedges this week and the bounce is much less and I think the look of the sand also helps because it’s firm. “
Justin Thomas felt uncomfortable at the beach Thursday but still shot a 3-under 67.
“It’s definitely the most challenging sand I’ve ever played. First of all, it’s not very stable. Like, 8 today, I told Bones [caddie Jim Mackay] It was wild, like my left foot when I was digging, kind of bare. Then my right foot was very good, like a normal person, it was like hitting the ball under my ball,” he said, pointing to the podium he was standing on.
“Some of them don’t have sand; some of them are good sand, whatever it is. But when you do, it’s very rough and sometimes you can get them between the face and the ball and see them shoot and go offline. “I’m sure you’ve seen from looking at the reports that the spin is really hard, basically impossible. Some bunker shots that are usually easy or guaranteed to come and go, certainly wasn’t the case this week.”
Pebbles don’t just affect bunker shots; they hit the greens, forcing players to work harder to clear their lines to avoid any horrific bounces.
“There’s definitely some pebbles out there,” said world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who shot 1-for-3 for a 71 in the sand. “I think most of what you see is when people hit the ball out of the bunker, they end up on the green.”
Cozby said a Southern Hills crew was standing next to each green, ready to blow the pebbles off the green.
Schaeffler continued: “The bunker shouldn’t be that easy to hit. It’s frustrating to definitely get in there and cobble the ball off the line, it’s something you can’t see. I shouldn’t be in too much of it. In the bunker, I put myself in three of them today and it’s definitely not where I want to be.”
Bunker shouldn’t be so easy to play out. It seems the best golfers in the world know there’s a surefire way to avoid the uncertainty and inconsistency of this week’s sand: Just don’t play there.
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