Greetings everyone. Long time lurker, first time poster here. You all can thank Lynn Shackelford for luring me here and getting me hooked on Golf Course Architecture.
As a member at the club in question, Pinebrook CC, I saw this topic and couldn't help but make my inaugural post about our club.
The story of the tree removal is correct. Roughly 3 months ago we contracted a logging company to come on site and remove as many of the interior hardwoods as they could without damaging the course.
The visual change to the course is dramatic. As Dunlop mentioned, there are exposed sight lines that probably haven't existed since the club was founded in 1954. The front nine sits in a a relatively flat plain, while the back nine meanders through hills and dense forest. Most of the tree removal occured on the back nine and the result is that you can now see much of the front nine from holes 10, 11, 13, and 14 on the back nine. You can now stand on the 13th green and see every green on the front nine except #2. Before the removal you could stand on 13 green and see roughly 1000 hardwood trees in your way if you glanced towards the front nine.
The financial benefit is obvious. Many clubs are struggling at this time, and here we found a way to generate much needed cash. The amount is expected to be significantly higher than the 40k mentioned earlier.
The tangential benefits are what really have some of the members excited. The improved vistas make the course more scenic, rather than being trapped between chutes of trees. The playability of the course will improve as recovery shots from the trees are now possible. Turf conditions will improve with increased airflow. Our super, who does a fantastic job on a shoestring budget will realize better turf conditions without having to increase maintenance costs.
A couple of the areas where we allowed the heavy equipment will need to be replaced, but through some amazing coincidence, those areas happen to be obvious candidates for new teeboxes anyway.
The obvious downside is the mess that is left behind. As winter has closed in on us, we can no longer allow the heavy equipment on the course without doing considerable damage. Hopefully in the springtime, we will start to clean things up a bit more.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I hate that the reason we had to embark on this was out of financial necessity and not because the membership decided we wanted to renovate the course. That the course will improve from this was an unintended consequence.
Pinebrook is a gem of a club that has seen tough times in recent years. However, due to this project and the efforts of a large group of our younger members we've picked up almost 60 new members in the last 3 months at a time when our club (and other clubs) typically has membership attrition. There is serious momentum around the club right now and a growing sense of excitement that not only are we going to come out of these tough times intact, but we will thrive!
I will do my best to get some before and after pictures up on this site sometime soon. For those of you interesting in learning more about Pinebrook, we have a website:
http://www.pinebrookcc.com/I've also got a few hundred pics of a recent trip to NewportCC that I would like to post here.