Good points here and an equally valid question. I got asked the other day about planting a tree as a memorial to a fallen member. I said OK as long as it serves a purpose such as providing shade in an out of play area where golfers are likely to back up and forced to wait. Trees aren’t native to our natural landscape, although we have plenty of them as result of 135 years of irrigation, artificial planting (a former orchard), and volunteers happily sucking up available water.
The biggest problem we have is that specimen trees, Lombardy poplars and others, were used as strategic features in the design of the golf course. My own theory is that fast growing poplars were planted all over the area, originally a sagebrush desert, to give a civilized appearance and attract settlers from more leafy regions. Also as windbreaks. The problem is that these poplars were all planted at more or less the same time and are now at the end of their natural lives. Each one that falls to the wind or is removed for safety reasons alters the strategy of play, usually making the hole less challenging. Replacing strategic trees will take many years to achieve same effect as their mature predecessors. Alternate hazards like bunkers are expensive to build and maintain. It’s a big problem and has convinced me about the questionable value using trees as an integral part of the design strategies.