GLORIFIED MOLE-HILLS
Hummocks and hollows should be made of all sorts of different shapes and sizes, and should have a natural appearance, with plenty of slope at the bottom like large waves. Most of the hummocks and hollows should be made so smooth that the mowing machine can be used over them. The glorified mole-hills one sees on many courses should be avoided.
The artificial hummocks guarding the fifth green at Alwoodley: approximate cost, £8. The best way of combining sand and hummocks, with the sand on the slope of the hazard above the ground level.
Bunkers on an inland course should, as a rule, be made in the opposite way to what is customary. At the present time most bunkers have the hollows sanded and the banks turfed. It is suggested that you get a much more natural appearance if the hollows are partly turfed over and the hummocks sanded, as in the photographs in these pages. This has the following advantages: the appearance is much more like a seaside course; the sand being above the level of the ground, always remains dry. The contrast between white or yellow sand and the grass helps one to judge distances much more accurately, and enables the ball to be found more easily, and the great disadvantage and expense of scything the long grass on the hummocks to prevent lost balls is done away with.
Ordinary bunkers are, as a rule, made in quite the wrong way. The face is usually too upright and the ball gets into an unplayable position under the face. The bottom of the bank of a bunker should have a considerable slope, so that a ball always rolls to the middle; the top of a bunker may, as it usually does in nature, be made to overhang a little so as to prevent a topped ball running through it.
Experience gained in the imitation of natural slopes in bunker-making was ultimately responsible for saving tens of thousands of pounds in revetting material in the great war.
Trenches with the sides made like a bank of a stream with a considerable slope at the bottom remained standing without any revetting material.
Before this principle was pointed out soldiers invariably dug their trenches with a slope at the top, and as they got farther down the sides became more vertical and sometimes were even undercut. A trench of this kind invariably fell in, whereas those made vertical at the top with the slope at the bottom did not do so.
Hazards are usually placed too far away from the greens they are intended to guard; they should be placed immediately on the edge of the greens, and then (particularly if they are in the form of smooth hillocks and hollows) the player who is wide of them has an extremely difficult pitch, and is frequently worse off than the man who is in them.