Indeed there was no "fair" or "unfair", there was only what there was. Part of the greater test of golf, as envisioned by its makers, was about copping bad breaks with good. Copping the uneven lie after the “perfect” tee shot. Aiming up as man and behaving as a gentleman after one's mid-fairway drive had rolled into rut of cart-wheel or carcass of rabbit.

Indeed club makers invented clubs for extracting one’s ball from wheel ruts and they called them rut irons, and they were like a 9-iron, and Young Tom Morris was the first to use one with a full swing and strike the ball in a downward-hitting motion and thus extract loft and a thing called “backspin”, they thought he was fair dinkum Merlin.

Anyway, Young Tom and his dad Old Tom, and you could slow-forward to James Braid and Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones, they copped the good with the bad. They didn’t like it, for they were golfers. To play golf is to not like the bastard game, to wonder why you play it. But they copped it. And they moved on muttering rude words like “bloody” and "gadzooks", possibly, who can say.

Today, though, we appear less inclined to cop “unfair”. We demand uniformity of surface. We demand reward for risk and for safety, for whacking it out there somewhere mid-fairway. Cop a bounce that shoots your $9 Titleist into the swamp, and you’re calling for the super-intendant’s bottom. 

The calls grow louder the higher one ascends. In professional golf, at least as it’s played on the US PGA Tour, is like a big game of grassy darts. Hoick the ball down the guts, hoick the ball onto the green, stick it in there, repeat. Sure, it requires skill. But imagination? The world’s least curious player is world number one.

Granted, the recent US Open was a bit funky, and inland-linksy, if you like. And a worthy champion copped the bad breaks with the good. And it was compelling viewing. And it was the sandy waste hazards of Pinehurst No.2 that made it so.

And there should be more of them. Indeed they should be everywhere. Off fairway. Mid-fairway. Greenside. Bunkers should be hazards. And thus we should not rake them.

The par-3 ninth hole at Pinehurst No.2. Are those tussocks of wiregrass in your bunker, sir, or are you just pleased to see me? PHOTO: David Cannon / Getty Images

Raking bunkers promotes uniformity. And even though the PGA wants all their golf courses to look the same, like the branding of McDonald's and Holiday Inn, uniformity is bad. As it was at No.2, luck should play a part whence a golfer finds themselves off-piste, as it were.

For one, bunkers are hazards. A golfer should walk into one hoping for luck. Bunkers should have lies which test a player’s mental mettle. They should send a man mental. They should be avoided.

There is no “fair” or “unfair”. There is only luck – good and bad.

There is, as they say, what there is.

Today, on pro tours, players aim for the bunkers. Bunkers are seen as the best miss. Up and down? Easy. These cats can make the Hot Dot sing. They get bite, loft, release, whatever they like, from sand lands like beds of feathers.

These are not hazards. They’re raked in beautiful concentric circles. They’re a cappuccino with a smiley face. They’re art. Caddies rake them like they’re doing their master’s lawn, as demanded by the most pampered people in world sport.

Bryson DeChambeau rode his luck into the greenside bunker on 18 at Pinehurst No.2 and produced a brilliant shot to win the U.S Open. Should he have known the lie was going to be fine? PHOTO: Getty Images

If we take a gouge out of the swamp beyond the red pegs, we don’t clean it up for the next guy. We don’t replace divots. It's just ... left there, for the next guy to do his best, ride his luck and cop it sweet like a gentleman.

In the aforementioned olden days they didn’t rake bunkers because they didn’t have bunkers, they just had sandy bits to be avoided if you wanted to avoid the great thumping hoof-print left by the Third Earl of McSproggit.

The manpower and hours required to tend to bunkers is disproportionate to other aspects of golf course maintenance. PHOTO: Getty Images

Don’t rake bunkers and you could negate, a bit, the issues with the ball and how far the big dogs are hitting it. Put a couple steep-faced sandy waste hazards out on the 330-yard line and tell Rory and Bryson and all the other big whackers: you want to have a crack and thread the needle, baby, knock yourself out and thrill us all.

If you want to go at that flag nearby the riveted and un-raked mystery hazard full of footprints on the short side, well, you go for you life, buddy-roo.

Maybe you’ll catch a break or two and win the US Open. But miss, friend, and you’re in a hazard. And we'll see what happens. And luck be a lady tonight.

As Old Tom Morris and Bryson DeChambeau would tell you.