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I Miss Trees; Do You?


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There is a trend in golf course design and re-design today to eliminate trees. My club is going through that right now. It seems like every week the maintenance crew takes down another tree. I understand that fewer trees helps with having better fairways and greens, but I still miss them. Obviously the first courses were built on links land near the sea where trees didn't grow. However, parkland courses were built in forests. I was watching the BMW at Wentworth this morning and the course is beautiful and features trees.  Augusta National is one the prettiest places in the world and they continue to actually add trees. I'm old enough to remember when a giant tree was added overnight to to the par five 8th hole at Inverness to prevent golfer Lon Hinkle from taking a short cut on the 528 yard hole in the 1979 US Open.  While I know this trend will probably continue, I am curious as to what the members of this site think about the topic.

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My club is taking down trees, but I'm 99% sure it's not because they're trying to tinker with the course design. It's because they're trying to reduce maintenance cost, or because some of them have died or are near death. 

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3 hours ago, ThinkingPlus said:

I would love to do a midnight chainsaw raid at our place.  Trees soak up water and kill grass.  I would take out every non-strategic tree on our course if it was up to me.

I should hook you up with a guy at our club. I used to call him Agent Orange.

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34 minutes ago, jvincent said:

I should hook you up with a guy at our club. I used to call him Agent Orange.

Our problem is too many bleeding heart tree huggers.  Mesquite and scrub oaks grow like weeds here.  Neither is golf course friendly.  Folks that live around the course would raise a stink if we removed all the trees that need to be removed. Sounds like your guy has ridden in the Roundup rodeo quite a bit.

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More like the chainsaw rodeo.

 

We actually lost a ton of ash trees to the ash borer. But we've also been taking out trees that have grown to the point of changing the way a hole is supposed to play and other that are impacting turf/green health.

 

We get a few complaints but once they are gone most people acknowledge we are better off. We still have plenty of trees left to get stuck behind.

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Older courses built on wooded property, eventually get overrun with too 
many trees blocking sun/air and blocking shots.   It is good to strategically 
remove some trees and trim others, without changing the way the holes were
meant to play.    I feel that is a lot better than removing all the trees.      

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Old parkland courses were build in fields and then the members decided they needed trees to beautify the land, so they planted thousands of them. A giant oak tree would look beautiful in center field of Yankee stadium but has not point being there.  I do like trees on courses, but only when they have high canopies. I also think each tree on the property should have a reason to be there and not just be another tree.

 

I remember reading a story from architect Ian Andrews about a method he used when dealing with a committee adverse to tree removal. He would give each member of the committee 25 pieces of tape and tell them to flag the trees they felt were absolutely critical to the design and playability of the course. Often the committee members would flag the same trees or come back to Ian with extra pieces of tape saying they couldn't find anymore critical trees. He used this exercise to show them often how little tree's impacted design and then he could talk about how by removing trees the course design and maintenance could be improved. 

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We have courses up here in New England over 100 years old. You know how big trees get over a 100 year lifespan? Even courses I played when I was younger, used to be able to go over the trees to make par, now you have to go around them and par? Ha! Triggs in Providence is like this, many of the big trees there do influence the shots. There are quite a few "chutes" you have to tee off through, not over. Forget if you draw or fade. You have to go straight or be forced to club down. 

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True tree lovers should generally be in favor of reducing the overall number of trees on their home course, because doing so enables the nicest trees to become more visible, and therefore easier to appreciate.

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Trees are my friend. but not always the courses budget friend.

 

Yesterday, after two unusual yanks left off the tee into trees, I found holes in trees to hit though to get back to the fairway.  Trees, like other obstacles, help me focus my mind on the task at hand.

 

I concur with the OP.  I am seeing more and more courses with trees slowly removing them which affects the design and in many cases course rating.  Some are being removed because they are diseased and others require costly hourly maintenance which hurts the Superintendents budget.  Which ever the reasoning, though, taking down trees affects the beauty; makes the course a bit more stark but much easier for people that are NOT very straight and or don't have the shot and or judgment needed to get out of the trees.

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I wouldn't go rip every tree out of a parkland layout.  To an extent they are intrinsic to the design.  However, where they aren't integral to the challenge, they should be limited if not all together removed.

 

However, these "wide open courses" that get poo-pooed pretty regular here have a purpose in their design as well.  They aren't wide for the sake of being wide open and easy in most cases.  A good archie will give you enough room to get yourself offline or disguise the line of charm.  While you maybe can spray it and still end up in the fairway, you may not be in the best spot to attack the green.  Which is the whole point of the design, give high handicappers some cushion while still asking better players to pick a spot to play to and play from.  The latter can get lazy if it looks wide open and "easy."

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As my greens keeper pal tells members ... “ do you want to play golf on a golf course or at an arboretum? “
 

we took down 1,000 trees at our course ... it is miles better now ... to meet environmental Regulations  we had to plant 2000 offsite 

 

one of our greens was getting 1hr of sunlight per day !

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11 minutes ago, cardoustie said:

one of our greens was getting 1hr of sunlight per day !

 

We have a tee box at our club that barely ever has grass because it is surrounded by trees. They need to cut out a 20 foot (or more) circle around it to give it enough light to allow the grass to grow.

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How much easier does cutting trees down actually make a course?  In theory, it could be a lot, but has there every been a real study that measured the effect.  Oakmont could have been a nice place to test it because they took out so many.  I doubt the effect is that significant.  If you cut every tree down on a course, I would be surprised if the course played more than 2 shots easier.  That may be a lot for a course rating, but in the scheme of golf, it doesn't seem like much to me.

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1 hour ago, CMCSGolf said:

How much easier does cutting trees down actually make a course?  In theory, it could be a lot, but has there every been a real study that measured the effect.  Oakmont could have been a nice place to test it because they took out so many.  I doubt the effect is that significant.  If you cut every tree down on a course, I would be surprised if the course played more than 2 shots easier.  That may be a lot for a course rating, but in the scheme of golf, it doesn't seem like much to me.

 

One could argue that cutting trees down could make a course play much harder. Where a wall of trees may knock down or deflect an errant drive back into play, remove the trees and the errant drive continues to fly offline. Depending on what the trees are replaced with the ball could be easily lost or unplayable. 

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I bought a house with a bunch of trees on the lot. About 10k later I have less trees, more grass and my roof is no longer in danger.  My neighbors trees are now doing better, I have shade still.  The only one pissed is me when I realize how much I have spent maintaining trees and the squirrels who can’t jump on my roof.  
 

trees are great.  On other peoples property.  

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On 10/8/2020 at 1:42 PM, Hogan9 said:

There is a trend in golf course design and re-design today to eliminate trees. 

I don't think there is a trend to eliminate trees. There is a trend to reduce trees. A well thought out tree removal program will bring back the shot values that the architect intended in cases where trees have impinged on the playing corridors through years of growth or from misguided tree planting over the years. However, removal can go too far if it eliminates trees that provide safety and/ or seclusion between holes or strategically placed trees.

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9 minutes ago, bermuda said:

For those with courses that have removed a lot of trees, did you just cut them down and chip them up or did you work with a logging company to sell them? If you sold them, was it a good return?

 

I've found that unless you're pulling down a large quantity of the exact same desirable species, timber companies don't want the wood. When my club started removing trees they just chiped them and laid down the chips as mulch around the course. 

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As mentioned above, most of the courses doing large scale tree removal were not heavily wooded originally.  Look at old aerials for most of the classic golden age courses.  Greens/beautification committes from the 40s-70s added most of the trees, many of which were non-native or ornamental.  They were also very often planted with little regard for the existing architecture, particularly given their now decades of growth.

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La Jolla Country Club in San Diego recently did this to try and return the course to it's original roots. The course you to virtually have a mini forest lining each fairway but I do love the new-old bunkering that Eckenrode implemented with his re-design. Here in California at least, Trees LOVE WATER, the amount of courses that have utilized water-reduction strategies is insane. Sadly, the course never looks as good post water reduction renovation 😞 

Here are some pics of LJCC. 

image.png.7bf269215b015ab499b39c9d3cf1ec9b.pngimage.png.d2b9eb80de82ac2534e59e648e53a63c.pngimage.png.5ae909e98a9a70f608784889ae3362c2.pngimage.png.d77085571b818a4743c3e75fa3be0983.png

 

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fewer trees means faster rounds and fewer lost balls ... which we are going to need now that every tom/dick/harry thinks power golf is the only way to play ... however, a tree or a few trees can make a hole very strategic ... pete dye is an excellent example of someone who uses a tree here or there to make a hole either actually different or visually (but not tangibly) different ... though one particular example of his is egregious ... i shall not dwell on it ... harbour town, which i've never played but have watched countless times, makes excellent use of trees here and there to alter the playability of a hole without causing too many lost balls ... and in the end, if you don't like a course without trees, or with trees, you can always  ... leave ... 

 

i'll stop posting for the day ... 

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Oh, right. I thought this was a brag thread. No, I always hit a tree every round, don’t miss them.

 

There are only a few trees here that grow well, and the ones with deep roots survive better as they can reach the water tables.

 

Golf is more fun when you have to contend with trees. Who wants to play “fairways and greens” and greens all the time? Haha!

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