Bill,
My 'weird thought' is that the bunker was misplaced at the 14th, thought too much work to fix, the old guys messed up, and was left. The tree trunk would have been smaller, albeit still an issue.
The Ross field sketch shows trees scribbed about the 14th hole. Holston does not (yet?) have the finished Ross sketches, with typed notes on the hole sketch sidebar, typical mid 1920 work. Tufts has only the Ross 'field' sketches in his handwriting. OTH, the club had a copy of the golf course plan, dated 1926 which Tufts did not.
See Keith's reply and you can view. I'll leave it at that. My best copy of the aerial is framed inside the clubnhouse.
Keith,
So true. You are correct. I was thinking of the 1940 oblique aerial, looking east from the general area of the old Weigal farm house. You can't quite see that one tree in the image as there were many large trees in the area of the 14th. Although you can see the tulip poplar on 2nd, and also the old hackberry, left fairway on the 17th, which was also lost in this recent late July 2008 storm.
Digital age is great. Sure beats looking through the old TVA records in Chattanooga, finding the old nitrate based negatives were shipped to Washington, then going through the National Archives, ordering positives to find the best negative, and then figuring out the whole reproduction process, whew ! Simpler days for photo work are here, if you can believe any photos these days !