the three trees left of the landing area on 10 replace three very large trees that greatly influenced play.
Looking at old pictures of Cal, one will see that it was a pretty dense forest. It was extremely penal. I still marvel at the fact that Ken Venturi shot 63 nine times, and the only reason he didn't shoot 62 was that the record was held by the home pro, Art Bell, and Byron Nelson always told Ken that, unless in competition, he should never show up the home pro.
About, 2,000 trees were removed 1997-98 which greatly improved the quality of the turf. The Kyle Phillips restoration removed another thousand, which, along with planting fescue grasses in the fairways, has given the course more of a links feel.
The original three trees left of #10 were two Cypress and a pine, all over 80 feet. The Cypress trees fell in winter storms around 1994-5 and the pine died after the 2008 new course opening. When the trees fell, players were then free to hit to the left side where one had the most level lie. Ken Venturi has told me that in his day the hole, on average, was a driver-five iron. The challenge of the hole was that your second was an uphill shot into the wind from a hanging lie.
Kyle's placement of the new back tee hopes to create the same shot value. He felt that replacing the trees on the left would cause the player to think more about his tee shot. I don't believe he wants a reforestation, and while we do have an agreement with the County to replace a per-centage of trees removed, those trees have been placed more on the periphery of the property.
As our own Arron Oberholser has opined, we now have a links golf feel with Augusta potential in the green complexes.