Just to show you what they think of trees on golf courses here in SoCal, something to make one puke. Taken from the Orange county Golf Magazine, written by Greg Flores who happens to be in charge of communtications for the SCPGA.
(By the way, Greg Flores is an old friend who will get a phone call from me tomorrow morning!:) Mind you the last one was concerning his love of Ted Robinson's waterscapes and how they are intrical to play.)
A TALL ORDER
Freshly planted trees line the fairways at Los Serranos, which lost thousands of older trees due to disease.
Eliminating thousands of trees at Los Serranos no easy task
BY Greg Flores
There are defining features that make a golf course. Be it narrow fairways, fast greens or severe bunkers, nearly every memorable golf course has something that leaves a lasting impression on the player.
At Los Serranos Country Club in Chino Hills, it was the trees. Massive eucalyptus trees to be exact. Some that stretched over 100 feet tall and some that dated back to the 1800s. The course was home to more than 3,000 of these giants that have slowly had the life sucked from their limbs by a tiny insect called a lerp.
Freshly planted trees line the fairways at Los Serranos, which lost thousands of older trees due to disease.
The lerp, which made its way into this country by way of Australia, attaches itself to the leaves of the red-gum eucalyptus tree and encases itself in a crusty hard shell. It literally sucks the life out of the tree by stopping photosynthesis and slowly killing it over the course of a two- to-three-year period.
According to Jack Kramer, the former tennis great and owner of the 36-hole facility since 1953, the entire property on which the two courses were built was once a massive grove of eucalyptus trees. Some of those trees were cut down to build the North course in 1925 and many more were removed to build the South course, which opened in 1964.
The giant eucs have always been a defining feature of each course, creating monstrous leafy defenders swallowing wayward shots.
Those days are gone. If you haven't played Los Serranos in a while, you won't believe your eyes. If you have never had the opportunity, you won't be able to comprehend how huge and integral those trees were to the landscape.
For head professional Mark Pailthorp, it was initially devastating. "When our general manager David Kramer told us what was happening, I said 'Oh my God.' was really worried about what that would mean to this golf course."
Pailthorp has more than a passing attachment to the facility. He has worked as a golf professional there for 17 years and has been playing there for more than 30.
"David assured us that everything was going to be all right, and he even thought that this might be an opportunity for us to do something great," Pailthorp said.
You would have to understand David Kramer to appreciate this comment completely. For David, the glass is never half empty, it is always overflowing with possibilities.
The first step was to get long-time course superintendent Steve Hall and his crew to work on the problem. Hall, who has been at the course for over 40 years, contacted experts in the field at both the local and national levels and they confirmed his finding that the problem was indeed the lerp.
For the average golfer who has trouble growing grass in their own yard, you might figure that the problem was solved. You just spray the trees with some sort of pesticide and the lerps curl up and die, but the lerp is a tough little bug. It seems that the only thing that can stop a lerp is a microscopic wasp that can only be found in Australia and, at the time of the original infestation, it was illegal to import them into this country.
While the powers at Los Serranos waited for the government to take the necessary steps to bring the wasp into this country, the mighty trees began to die. Then another problem popped up. It seems that when 100-foot tall eucalyptus trees die, their bark shrivels up and falls from the sky in sections as large as 12 feet tall and weighing in excess of 100 pounds. In a wind, these pieces could fly 20 to 30 yards in the air. This can be hazardous to golfers, especially those of us who spend a fair amount of time in the trees.
The management team quickly assessed that the safety of their golfers was important and considering that golfers crushed by giant falling chunks of eucalyptus trees rarely return to play your course again, they ordered the removal of the trees.
Again, on paper, removing trees seems like a painless procedure, but we are talking about more than 2,000 trees that had to come down and have the stumps removed.
"It sounds easy," Pailthorp said. "Just bring some trucks in with chainsaws and bring the trees down, but the problem is when you load up these trucks with trees, they become extremely heavy. If the ground they drive over is not very hard, they will sink and crush any underground irrigation lines and then you have a whole new problem. We had to map out the irrigation lines and create a sort of path to bring the trucks in and out. Then we had to dry up these areas so that they would become rock hard. All of this had to be done while attempting to stay out of the way of paying players."
Pailthorp and the rest of the golf staff then had to begin the education process for the thousands of golfers who visit Los Serranos each year. "We just wanted to make sure that golfers understood what was going on out there and why we were doing it," he said.
David Kramer was not far off in his assessment that this environmental tragedy might result in something even better. One problem that always existed at Los Serranos was that the trees were so large that they kept certain areas of the course from getting enough sunlight to let the grass grow properly. In addition, the eucs secrete an acid that does not allow grass to grow around the base of the tree or near its root structure. Those problems are gone as the course is lush, especially the tees and fairways, with certain areas sporting a grassy cover where only dirt had existed for years.
For golfers giddy about the idea of playing a treeless golf course, take note. There are still a lot of trees on the course, and more than 1,800 more have been added to integral parts of the course. Other areas where trees once stood will be grassed over once the stumps are removed.
"I think David was right when he said we will end up with a superior product," Pailthorp said. "I'd be surprised if we are not in our best condition ever."
Greg Flores is the publications/media relations manager for the Southern California PGA. E-mail your questions and comments to him at scpgamedia@aol.com, or call him at (714) 776-4653.