Bryan,
As David suggests, the trees behind could be the edge of the clearing, but why would they stop on the top of the ridge or even anywhere on the property out to the tracks, since the fairway areas seem to be clear cut.
Bryan, Actually I should have also said that we could be seeing the edge of a clearing (or at least scattered trees) on one side or another of a ridge line.
The ridge on which the 3rd tee sits continues to rise to the west, and the ridge apparently runs all the way to your previously mentioned high point (about 200 ft elevation) on the short course (near the furthest south green on the short course.) So from a camera angle looking more from the east of the third tee than north of it, a tree line to the west of the 3rd tee (if there was one) might be visible more
behind the third tee than to the side of it. Whether or not this is a true ridge visible as a ridge line and whether or not we might be able to see some sort of a tree line (or scatted trees) depends upon the camera angle.
Also, I am not so sure that it is "clear cut" that everything on the course property over there was clear cut to the property lines. Jeff seems to think he can the cut line of the 4th fairway, and it runs at a bias right through what you have indicated as the 4th fairway. Moreover, I can't make it out for certain, I
think the words "scattered trees" are written on the Topo, between the 2nd fairway and the 4th fairway. Unfortunately there is no demarcation indicating how far up the hill (or over the hill) the "scattered trees" extend, but if there are scattered trees between the 2nd and 4th tees, the trees might appear on the false horizon line of the ridge, behind the 4th fairway, especially where the 4th fairway bends and after.
Using Google Earth, I plotted the elevation profile on a transverse from the current 3rd tee to the current 5th tee. I have overlaid it on the Brown picture. It required some shifting left and right to try to get some alignment with the ridge line in red. I see some alignment, but it is not perfect. If it is approximately correct, then the 4th fairway and 5th tee are where i've indicated, while the 3rd tee is about 1.25" outside the picture to the left.
Remember how I keep mentioning that I think your red line is missing a shallow indentation on the left side? Well I think your green line has this shallow indentation, only it looks to be too far left --you have the indentation where your ridge line appears to be rising. Were you to rerun your experiment with the same shaped line, only compressing it to start at about the 6, instead of the left edge, I think you'd have a much better match.