What Is A Bunker In Golf?

What is a bunker in golf?

A bunker in golf is defined under the rules as a “specially prepared area intended to test the player’s ability to play a ball from the sand.”

Bunkers sometimes get colloquially called sand traps, but bunker is the official term used in the rules of golf. Rule 12 explains what can and cannot be done in a bunker, as the rules for playing out of a bunker are different from when playing from the fairway. (The main one is that the club cannot be grounded in a bunker before playing the shot – to do so is to incur a shot penalty.)

A waste bunker is distinct from a bunker. A bunker is a “specially prepared area”. A waste bunker is an area of sandy waste ground on a golf course. Thus the rules as to what you cannot do in a bunker do not apply to waste bunkers which are treated as just another area of rough.

Similarly grass bunkers are not treated as bunkers under the rules of golf. So you can play from them just as you would from the rough or fairway. Grass bunkers are deep indentations in fairway or rough such that they look like a normal bunker except that they have no sand in them it as it is a grassed area. (Sometimes grass bunkers were simply old sand bunkers that have been grassed over.)

What is a cross bunker in golf?

A cross bunker is a bunker which you have to cross with your ball when playing a hole. Thus you have to hit the ball over it rather than around it. A cross bunker can come in all shapes and sizes, but typically it is wide and aligned roughly perpendicular to the fairway.

What is a pot bunker in golf?

A pot bunker is a particularly fiendish design of bunker which is small, round and very deep and so harder to play out from than most bunkers. It is most commonly found on links courses.

Contributing Writer Roderick is the author of the critically acclaimed comic golf novels, Summer At Tangents, which was one of Country Life magazine's Books of The Year for 2024 and nominated for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, and Crime Wave At Tangents. Golf courses and travel are Roderick’s particular interests. He writes travel articles and general features for the magazine and website and compiles the magazine's crossword. He is a member of Trevose and has played golf in around two dozen countries. Cricket is his other main sporting love. He is also the author of five non-fiction books, four of which are still in print: The Novel Life of PG Wodehouse; The Don: Beyond Boundaries; Wally Hammond: Gentleman & Player and England’s Greatest Post-War All Rounder.