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By Mike Vitti
PGA TOUR Staff

Last year, in an attempt to toughen the course, the Memorial Tournament drew a line in the sand and created a bit of a stir when it decided to furrow the bunkers on host course Muirfield Village.

Although the response from the players in last year's field was mixed, the tournament is again challenging the players with those ridges in the sand. The real question is whether the furrowing is working the way it was planned.

Examining the ShotLink data from the last several years at the Memorial, it appears that the bunker furrowing definitely has the desired effect when looking at the data from the fairway bunkers, but the effects around the green are more subdued.

In 2006, the tournament saw its lowest greens in regulation percentage on approaches from the fairway bunkers since ShotLink started tracking this data in 2003. The GIR rate of 25 percent was almost half of the TOUR average of 47.2 percent.

This added difficulty in finding the green from the bunker also increased the relative to par (RTP) scoring averages on par-fours and par fives for players landing in the bunkers off the tee.

Last year the TOUR RTP scoring average when playing out of a fairway bunker was only about a quarter stroke over par (.231) but at Muirfield, this average was more than doubled to create over a half stroke penalty (.588) for those landing in the sand off the tee.

Around the greens the Memorial did have the fourth lowest sand save percentage on the PGA TOUR in 2006, and it was the lowest in the last four years at this event. However, this may have been more attributable to putting than play from the bunkers.

This theory is based on the field average for proximity to the hole from the sand. At Muirfield the average proximity to the hole (PTH) from the sand was only tied for fifteenth highest when compared with other events on the PGA TOUR.

Overall, it was only five inches higher than the season average on TOUR. In fact, the Memorial's PTH from the sand was still over two feet shorter than the event with the highest average - The Honda Classic, where the field averaged 12 feet, 10 inches from the hole on their attempts from the sand with a resulting Sand Save percentage of 37.73 percent.

This leads me to believe that the furrowing of the bunkers around the green did not have as large an impact as it did in the fairway.

In the end, the furrowing of the bunkers is definitely an interesting twist to course set-up and it succeeds in its aim to challenge the games of the players in the field.