[Jeff Schley]

In the last 5-10 years we seem to have classic venues that have undergone tree removal renovations, quite extensively. Oakmont and Quail Hollow come to mind. I'm just a amateur golfer and design enthusiast, but how did these thousands of trees get there to remove?  Apparently they weren't in the designers original plan, but the club just kept planting on its own? Was there a tree planting era in the 60's or something? 

I hope some of you guys have some insights into this issue as I have read that it is better for the grass to limit the shade of trees and air flow. 

Has this practice been met by the environmentally conscious?  I'm sure there are some tree huggers out there too.

[Jim Lipstate]

My home club probably serves as a fairly typical example of how courses become tree bound. We are a Dick Wilson designed course built in the mid-fifties. Originally the course was fairly wide open but with some water oaks and live oaks. Pine trees, because they grow quickly, and hard woods were planted. As some of the water oaks were nearing the end of their natural life span new young trees were planted to “protect the integrity of the course”. Now we have live oaks spreading outward and compromising fairways. Old water oaks having refused to die are still around surrounded by newer young trees further constricting fairways and making recovery shots from the rough almost impossible.  We have areas where it is difficult to grow grass in fairways not to mention the numerous areas in the rough where the ground is bare and with many roots at or just beneath the surface of the ground.


The USGA agronomists make an annual visit and have advised us that the number one problem we have is trees. In the last few years a select few trees were removed as shade was causing problems with grass growth on a green and tee boxes. This past year we removed approximately 20 trees as phase one of a multi year project but tree removal is expensive and controversial esp. in a member owned club. My hope is that we will find the funds to continue the tree removal which will only improve the playing quality of the course in my opinion.

[Jack Carney]

My opinion - In the 1950's when they started showing the Masters on TV the preponderance of Greens Committees across the US wanted their course to look like Augusta National. They planted trees everywhere and in time they grew too big - encroaching fairways, changing shot lines, blocking sunlight and taking nutrients from the surrounding grass. In addition, architectural thought came back to feeling and understanding the land as the course was played as well as a style change of being able to "see through" the course.


One of the best examples is Aronimick in the Philadelphia area. I caddied there in High School and every hole was secluded from the rest of the course. about ten years ago they cut down 10,000 plus trees or more. I went back and played it two years ago and the result is delightful. The first time I ever, after hundreds of rounds, could feel the property. I didn't miss the trees at all and the course was in outstanding condition.


Aronimick was certainly not the first as the NGL and Shinny both removed 10,000 or more well before i believe. A great story is the Oakmont story of "Thunder and Lighening" taking down thousands of trees before the general membership knew what was happening. Thunder and Lightening was the names of the two chain saws the Board purchased for tree removal. Whenever a storm came through the crew went out and cut down trees. When the membership asked what happened they were told that Thunder and Lightening got those trees!!!

[Pete Lavallee]

Another example would be a Golden Age course originally built with 50 yard wide fairways which were unirrigated; greens would be watered by hand at night with a quick coupler. When single row irrigation was installed down the centerline the throw was 30 yards. So now you have a 10 yard wide patch of dry rough which needed to be beautified. Trees were planted to make these areas more aesthetically pleasing and compatible with the now lush fairways.

[Bill Brightly]

Jeff, have you ever gone on Historic Aerials? You can type in any golf course, look at the aerials from various years, and pretty much figure out when the trees were planted. At my home club, it was somewhere between 1961 and 1964. In the 1964 aerial you can see that about a thousand little white pine and spruce saplings had been planted. In the 1985 aerial, you can see the course literally choked with those trees.
https://www.historicaerials.com/



I believe Oakmont's tree removal happened 20 years ago...

[John Connolly]

Dutch Elm Disease wiped out many naturally occurring and strategically planted Elms throughout the country in the middle of the 20th century. Clubs established tree funds and an over compensation of planting resulted, often in a haphazard fashion. The blight's impact on current tree over-population probably can't be overestimated.

[Duncan Cheslett]

The land on which our course was built was essentially free of trees and remained so from 1912 right up to the early 1970s. We have a photograph from 1972 showing a completely open vista.

A UK government advertising campaign urging all and sundry to "Plant a Tree in '73" marked the national change in consciousness relating to trees. Suddenly trees were being planted everywhere, and nowhere more so than on golf courses. Couple this with the advent of colour TV and the subsequent "Augusta Effect"...




...before long it became the expected norm for all golf holes to be lined with trees.


The 1970s and Ted Heath's Conservative government have a lot to answer for!

[Jeff Schley]

Interesting cases sited above. I do know that trees have a relatively small amount of impact on the course rating/slope unless it is down the center line, thus the excuse to not remove trees because that hole will be easier is minimized. 

For those superintendents or arborists on the board, what tree species is known for being too predatory towards nutrients in the ground around it so as grass suffers significantly?  Also which are more friendly?  This will vary on geography for native species I'm sure.

[Ed Homsey]

My home club, Stafford CC, in Stafford, NY, has a 1921 Travis designed course on land that contained very few trees, a line of Black Cherry that cut across the course, but was largely removed during course construction; a couple of White Oak; and some apple trees.  In 1927, the club's Board of Governors employed a noted landscape architect, Harold L Olmsted, to oversee a tree planting program that ran into the early '30s.  He scattered several oaks around the course, many elms, ash, and silver maples.  The Dutch Elm disease, of the late '50s, wiped out most of the silver maples.   Unfortunately, in some areas, those trees were replaced, with a variety of trees.  In the early '60s, several varieties of pines/spruce trees were planted throughout the course.

All of that has come home to roost.  Silver Maples have become a major problem, many of the Oaks are in positions where they limit sun and air to greens, etc.  Fortunately, most everyone is on board with the major tree removal that is underway.

[V. Kmetz]

Siwanoy CC (Bronxville NY) was a more provincial story...


Now righteously returned to an almost barren landscape of short hills and dales, Siwanoy was (up until 1997-8) positively choked with trees...the grown up result of some 2000 saplings which were purchased en masse for .50 cents a piece in 1933 from a nursery going bankrupt up the street from the club in Eastchester...


Besides the various cultural factors (tv golf, course beautiful movement, real estate, hole privacy and safety) that have been cited, whenever I research an older (50+ years) course, I often find at least one individual character who personally took "the bull by the horns" and executed such plantings "supra-membership"... sometimes they even paid for and planted the things themselves and in doing this, rarely drew contemporary ire because such bootstrap efforts were seen as philanthropic/altrustic (a man spending his own time and money for the "good" of the course.


Another ironic contribution I can make is that even the most esteemed of courses -- Winged Foot -- exhibited an unsual attachment to what trees contributed...if you find that curious, just look at their 1983 club history by member Douglas LaRue Smith, The Winged Foot Story: The Golf, the People, the Friendly Trees.


I don't want to demean Smith's fine and unique book, nor tar WF for the (relative) ignorance 35 years ago... still ,this book devotes most of its hole description (West and East courses) and a lot of its ethos to the property's role as a first class American arboretum. And NO, I mean NO, specimen of tree is spared of loving worshipful praise...if you're ever looking for someone to tell you the value of a Hemlock or a Scotch Pine, this is your book.


cheers   vk

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