Luckily for Rees, all he needs is 5 or 6 old-school committees/chairs to agree with him -- you know, the kind of low handicappers (relative to the rest of the membership) who are afraid that tree removal will make their course play too easy. In gca's version of "leave the gun, take the cannoli", Rees call tell them to "leaves the trees, move back the tees". And I don't mean any of this sarcastically. There's room enough -- indeed, it's good for everyone in the business that there is such room -- for all sorts of gca 'brands' and approaches; and, as Pat M never tired of telling us, club members have a right to do with their course just as they please (and this too, in the long run, is best for all involved.) Plus, just because Rees has maybe exaggerated a bit to make his point, let's not err in the other direction, ie with this talk of selective pruning, as if just under the surface of this current trend isn't a desire to get rid of all the trees and make every course look like Sand Hills or Mammoth Dunes, or at least like Oakmont. If it really was just about cutting down a few trees here and there to help turf and open up some sight lines, people in the business would've just gotten on with this (modest and humble) task instead of treating the idea as an ethical principle and the task as complicated as brain surgery.