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Trees and Golf · Designing Golf

0:00
Speaker 1: Golfers have strong feelings about trees. Take the venue of
0:04
Speaker 1: last week's US Open, Oakmont Country Club. Between the nineteen
0:07
Speaker 1: nineties and twenty ten's Oakmont removed almost all of the
0:11
Speaker 1: trees on its golf course, and today in twenty twenty five,
0:15
Speaker 1: this is still a controversial subject. Some people are still
0:19
Speaker 1: mad about it. So in this episode, we're talking about
0:23
Speaker 1: trees on golf courses, why they get planted, why they
0:26
Speaker 1: might be removed, and what effect they have on the game.
0:30
Speaker 1: My guest is Bradley Klein, a veteran golf architecture writer
0:34
Speaker 1: and consultant. Brad has been thinking about the tree issue
0:37
Speaker 1: for decades now, and few people are more knowledgeable about it.
0:41
Speaker 1: I'm Garrett Morrison and this is designing golf. So, Bradley,
0:52
Speaker 1: in addition to writing prolifically about golf courses, you have
0:56
Speaker 1: a lot of experience consulting with clubs about golfer chitecture.
1:00
Speaker 1: I assume some of these consultations involved tree studies. Am
1:05
Speaker 1: I right about that?
1:06
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure?
1:07
Speaker 1: What do those usually involve? How does that process look?
1:11
Speaker 2: So? Without? You know, I could get into various details,
1:14
Speaker 2: but this started about twenty What is it now? It's
1:18
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. So it started twenty five years ago
1:21
Speaker 2: when I started writing about trees and realizing that almost
1:25
Speaker 2: every course I was looking at, including one I was
1:27
Speaker 2: a member at, was completely overtreate. And at this time
1:33
Speaker 2: there were already rumors are not the right word, but
1:36
Speaker 2: murmurings of what was going on at Oakmont, which was
1:42
Speaker 2: just beginning to under the guise of their superintendent, Marque
1:49
Speaker 2: Markuns surreptitiously with They had the sod squad out there
1:55
Speaker 2: at four in the morning with a couple of boxes
1:57
Speaker 2: of Krispy kremes the laborers and they were taking down
2:02
Speaker 2: trees and taking the root ball out and sotting it
2:05
Speaker 2: over and tapping it down, and first group out wouldn't
2:08
Speaker 2: even notice anything. Took a while for that to happen,
2:11
Speaker 2: but for them to get caught, But that was the start,
2:14
Speaker 2: and generally, you know, I was very involved in the
2:18
Speaker 2: restoration movement, if you will, early on as a writer,
2:23
Speaker 2: championing that and trying to undo in my mind and editorially,
2:28
Speaker 2: what I had seen was a lot of reckless modernization
2:33
Speaker 2: of golf courses, whether lengthening, stretching, overgrowing, making them straight
2:39
Speaker 2: and losing a lot of the character, and so I
2:44
Speaker 2: started writing about that and then I got called. One
2:46
Speaker 2: of the early ones was Sciota actually nineteen ninety nine
2:50
Speaker 2: or two thousand. I still have these reports, and you know,
2:54
Speaker 2: you sort of walk them through what was happening, and
2:58
Speaker 2: you try to develop criteria of evaluation. And it helped
3:02
Speaker 2: listening to Gil Hands back then. I have known Gil
3:06
Speaker 2: since nineteen ninety four when he was probably making five
3:10
Speaker 2: hundred bucks a day on a dozer over at Engineers
3:13
Speaker 2: Golf Club on Long Island, and we spent a lot
3:15
Speaker 2: of time walking and talking, and I went to a
3:18
Speaker 2: presentation and he developed these criteria that I'll never forget
3:21
Speaker 2: about the priorities when you're looking at trees, and it
3:25
Speaker 2: was a matter of the agronomic impact, impact on strategic
3:29
Speaker 2: flexibility of the golf course, the esthetics of the view shed,
3:35
Speaker 2: the health of the tree, and also issues of safety
3:39
Speaker 2: of personnel on the golf course. And so you start
3:43
Speaker 2: thinking about these trees and what they're doing, and the
3:46
Speaker 2: species and the appropriateness, and you start realizing that most
3:51
Speaker 2: golf courses, and this is in the northeast, Midwest, Southeast,
3:55
Speaker 2: were wildly overtreated. You know, in my background. I think
4:00
Speaker 2: it's helpful to know. I'm an educator by training. I
4:02
Speaker 2: have a PhD in political science. I was a university professor.
4:05
Speaker 2: I'm very dogmatic in the classroom. It's probably why I quit.
4:08
Speaker 2: I got frustrated. But I believe in things and I
4:11
Speaker 2: believe in advocating them, and frankly, I didn't think that
4:15
Speaker 2: was happening in the golf industry. I thought the other
4:17
Speaker 2: people writing about golf architecture, in particular Ron Whitten, to
4:21
Speaker 2: be fair, he's very knowledgeable, incredibly knowledgeable, but he wasn't advocating.
4:26
Speaker 2: He was more the kind of a neutral attorney sifting
4:31
Speaker 2: through information, and I was more going to be an agitator.
4:35
Speaker 2: And I had a platform at Golf Week. I was
4:37
Speaker 2: writing articles like crazy, and I've had a following. You know,
4:44
Speaker 2: as you know about five or six percent of golfers
4:47
Speaker 2: really care about architecture in an unbelievably passionate way. And
4:52
Speaker 2: I had people who started asking me about, Hey, what
4:55
Speaker 2: do you think about our golf course. I said, well,
4:57
Speaker 2: let me go take a look. So I started.
5:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, And obviously, you know, as part of the larger
5:04
Speaker 1: restoration movement, tree management programs were a big part of
5:09
Speaker 1: that often the most controversial piece of any given restoration projects.
5:14
Speaker 1: So well, we'll get into some of the details of
5:17
Speaker 1: why trees might be removed or managed. I think that
5:21
Speaker 1: that sort of Gilhand's playbook that you briefly refer to
5:25
Speaker 1: would be a good structure for us in talking about
5:29
Speaker 1: trees on golf courses. But I'm curious, first of all
5:33
Speaker 1: about the history of trees on golf courses. Maybe we
5:37
Speaker 1: could just give a broad overview of how things have
5:41
Speaker 1: evolved over the past one hundred years or so as
5:43
Speaker 1: it relates to trees on golf courses. What were some
5:48
Speaker 1: of the attitudes of Golden age golf architects toward trees
5:53
Speaker 1: on inland golf courses specifically, and by Golden Age I
5:57
Speaker 1: mean the architects who are working primarily in the first
6:01
Speaker 1: four decades of the twentieth century. What were their feelings,
6:05
Speaker 1: both expressed and implicit through their work about trees and golf.
6:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question. The first thing is that
6:14
Speaker 2: trees weren't even an issue until golf moved inland. So
6:18
Speaker 2: the basic structure of the game is founded upon coastal
6:23
Speaker 2: golf links. Golf and even though it's a small, tiny
6:26
Speaker 2: percentage of the golf courses. It's a strong component of
6:31
Speaker 2: the early foundation of understanding what was going on, and
6:35
Speaker 2: golf architecture really was trying to take those design principles
6:41
Speaker 2: of flexibility, of using the wind, of using ground contour,
6:45
Speaker 2: of using hollows that had been created, and taking it
6:48
Speaker 2: to a land that was not ideally suited, but that's
6:52
Speaker 2: where people were, namely inland, and so around just before
6:56
Speaker 2: the turn of the century, lateeteen century, you would say
7:03
Speaker 2: the game started moving into onto land that really needed
7:07
Speaker 2: to be worked. It had to be drained, it had
7:09
Speaker 2: to be cleared as well. Now, initially many of the
7:14
Speaker 2: sites that were picked were treeless. I'll give you an
7:17
Speaker 2: example because I just saw at Huntercombe, which is Lillly Park,
7:20
Speaker 2: Junior's great inland course an hour west of Heathrow Airport,
7:27
Speaker 2: was a completely treeless site, fairly flat, low lying, and
7:31
Speaker 2: the contours that were created were essentially ditches and hollows
7:34
Speaker 2: and barrow pits for coal and for mining that had
7:38
Speaker 2: been established on site. And he worked the whole golf
7:41
Speaker 2: course around it. And the trees came in later, but
7:44
Speaker 2: it's not till a tree clearing was required for wooded
7:48
Speaker 2: sites on farmland where you had rows of trees that
7:51
Speaker 2: had been used as boundaries. You know, when you're assembling
7:54
Speaker 2: a golf course property of one hundred and fifty eight
7:57
Speaker 2: as you're often involving different parcels of land that are
8:01
Speaker 2: divided by trees, and that's when the removal process started
8:06
Speaker 2: to take place in a heavy handed way. Ross was
8:09
Speaker 2: one of those. Mackenzie was similar McDonald. As I recall
8:13
Speaker 2: not most of them didn't write very much. You know,
8:16
Speaker 2: the writings we have are from the Occasional Polemical book
8:22
Speaker 2: by Hunter or McKenzie and McDonald. Ross himself wrote very
8:29
Speaker 2: very little, but they made it Tillinghast was more prolific
8:32
Speaker 2: about this. They made it clear that trees were acceptable
8:36
Speaker 2: and appropriate, but not to be central. They had a character,
8:41
Speaker 2: you know, they that first of all, delineating the boundary
8:45
Speaker 2: of the property the occasional dog leg around. But I
8:49
Speaker 2: think it was Ross who said that it was a
8:51
Speaker 2: mistake to make a tree a central component of the
8:54
Speaker 2: strategy of a golf hall. So while they accepted, and
8:57
Speaker 2: partly that's an economic when you when you when you're
8:59
Speaker 2: on a site with trees, you decide how much you're
9:03
Speaker 2: going to cut down. They wanted generous fairways, and it
9:06
Speaker 2: has to be said that even their inland golf courses
9:09
Speaker 2: back then were fifty sixty yard white fareaways. The narrowing
9:13
Speaker 2: of fairways was a function of the introduction of fairway irrigation,
9:18
Speaker 2: which could only throw water thirty yards, and everything else
9:21
Speaker 2: outside of that starff. So they started to fill that
9:23
Speaker 2: space of dead grass. You know, they put an irrigation
9:28
Speaker 2: system and thinking it's going to irrigate the golf course
9:30
Speaker 2: and only irrigated thirty yards. Everything else was dying. So
9:32
Speaker 2: they then filled it up with trees. And that was
9:35
Speaker 2: after World War two for the most part. So you
9:38
Speaker 2: look at the history of the planting, which is part
9:41
Speaker 2: of this. The aggressive planting program didn't take place till
9:44
Speaker 2: after World War two. So what it tells you is
9:47
Speaker 2: when you look at the early images, and we do
9:50
Speaker 2: this all the time, I'm thinking of a wonderful Donald
9:54
Speaker 2: Ross's a nine hole golf course in Massachusetts called Whitonsville,
9:58
Speaker 2: and there's an aerial from nineteen twenty seven twenty eight,
10:04
Speaker 2: and it shows about eight pine trees out there, all
10:07
Speaker 2: clustered between the first green and the sixth faaraway, and
10:13
Speaker 2: that's it. Everything is also wide open, and the heart
10:16
Speaker 2: was they had, by the way, were many of them
10:18
Speaker 2: graceful oaks and American elm. And the American elm was
10:21
Speaker 2: a fantastic golf tree because it had deep roots, It
10:26
Speaker 2: had a tall main trunk with a beautiful kind of
10:30
Speaker 2: champagne glass canopy, and you could play under and around
10:33
Speaker 2: the whole under and around the tree. And so as
10:38
Speaker 2: a majestic, gracious tree, it actually allowed you to incorporate
10:44
Speaker 2: that and still have an element of grace and beauty
10:47
Speaker 2: and strategy all combined with that kind of a tree. Unfortunately,
10:52
Speaker 2: when the American elm started to get the Dutch elm
10:55
Speaker 2: disease around and after World War Two, and of them
11:00
Speaker 2: came down on golf courses, they were replaced. People got nervous.
11:04
Speaker 2: They started planting spruce and sugar maples and swamp maples
11:07
Speaker 2: and all sorts of trees that were not indigenous to
11:10
Speaker 2: clutter up or fill up the golf course. Brookside Country
11:13
Speaker 2: Club was a great example of this in Canton, Ohio.
11:15
Speaker 2: It was one of my early projects that I was
11:17
Speaker 2: involved with. And you go out there on the aerials
11:20
Speaker 2: from nineteen twenty it's just sand, open blast areas, no
11:23
Speaker 2: trees anywhere. And by nineteen fifty seven, fifty eight, these
11:28
Speaker 2: kind of you know, it looked like German prisoners of
11:31
Speaker 2: war had planted trees every nineteen and a half feet
11:34
Speaker 2: in a dead straight row down both sides of every fairway.
11:39
Speaker 2: So by the time television came along to show what
11:42
Speaker 2: golf courses looked like, people thought that that look of
11:46
Speaker 2: the enclosed, narrow, thirty yard wide, straight tree covered canopy
11:52
Speaker 2: was the norm, and it wasn't.
11:55
Speaker 1: So you've you've laid out some history for us here.
11:57
Speaker 1: You know, we start in the first deck of the
12:00
Speaker 1: twentieth century, where the general attitude of most golf architects
12:05
Speaker 1: is that trees can be appropriate on a golf course,
12:08
Speaker 1: but not too many. We're certainly not going to have
12:10
Speaker 1: rows of trees enclosing golf holes because that sort of
12:15
Speaker 1: chokes out the character of the land and of the
12:19
Speaker 1: strategy of the whole and creates other problems as well.
12:24
Speaker 1: But then in the post World War II period we
12:27
Speaker 1: have these planting programs, sometimes motivated motivated by so called beautification.
12:34
Speaker 1: Other times you refer to the to the elm disease,
12:38
Speaker 1: the elm blight that happened in the middle of the
12:41
Speaker 1: twentieth century, and sometimes clubs would react to that by
12:44
Speaker 1: planting a bunch of trees to replace the lost elms.
12:48
Speaker 1: Except those trees were not nearly as well suited to
12:52
Speaker 1: golf as the elms, nor as beautiful, And so we
12:56
Speaker 1: have a variety of factors leading to pretty aggressive planting
13:01
Speaker 1: programs at many classic golf courses in the fifties, sixties,
13:05
Speaker 1: and seventies. Now we get to the eighties and nineties,
13:09
Speaker 1: and this is when you're starting to enter the industry
13:13
Speaker 1: yourself and writing about golf courses. I've always been curious,
13:18
Speaker 1: what do you think are the roots of the tree
13:23
Speaker 1: management programs that started in the nineties and really picked
13:26
Speaker 1: up pace in the twenty first century. And specifically, I've
13:31
Speaker 1: always sort of wondered when I read about the history
13:34
Speaker 1: of Oakmont's tree removal program, it always the story always
13:39
Speaker 1: begins with, well, the club's board and green chairmen were
13:45
Speaker 1: strongly in support of restoration and removing trees, and the
13:51
Speaker 1: members really weren't. And I've always wondered, Okay, well, why
13:55
Speaker 1: was the club's board in support of it in the
13:58
Speaker 1: first How did momentum build in the first place to
14:02
Speaker 1: start removing trees at Oakmont and at many other clubs.
14:06
Speaker 1: I don't know what do you have to say about that.
14:08
Speaker 1: What do you think the what do you think the
14:09
Speaker 1: kind of underlying factors are that that led to tree
14:13
Speaker 1: management becoming a popular process.
14:17
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think it's I wouldn't say it's popular.
14:19
Speaker 2: What I would say it's widely accepted among people who
14:21
Speaker 2: know what they're talking about. So the couple There are
14:26
Speaker 2: lots of different strands and converging moments here, So I'll
14:29
Speaker 2: give one. One stream is that restoration generically became a buzzword.
14:37
Speaker 2: I give the founding moment, and I'm proud to have
14:40
Speaker 2: caddied there at the eighty six US Open at Hinnacock.
14:44
Speaker 2: That was a big watershed in the moment in which
14:48
Speaker 2: we discovered at one hundred year old golf course could
14:50
Speaker 2: still be relevant.
14:52
Speaker 1: And that was the first US Open to be held
14:53
Speaker 1: at Shinnacock since eighteen ninety six. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:57
Speaker 2: Now, I mean you look back at it, it was
15:00
Speaker 2: it was heavily trigued a lot more than now, but
15:02
Speaker 2: still it was really cool to go out there and
15:07
Speaker 2: the wind swept links courses. You know, it was windy,
15:11
Speaker 2: it was very difficult, lots of fescue a little tall
15:14
Speaker 2: off everywhere, and it was rough conditions and it was
15:17
Speaker 2: not what you would call a well manicured, beautiful golf course.
15:22
Speaker 2: They were still back then, they were still triplex mowing
15:25
Speaker 2: the greens and gang mowing the fairways and fairly rough conditions.
15:32
Speaker 2: But the point is that the USJ made a commitment there,
15:36
Speaker 2: maybe by accident, whatever, it doesn't matter what their motive was.
15:39
Speaker 2: The impact was people started talking. And then two years
15:43
Speaker 2: later eighty eight the country club at Brookline was really
15:48
Speaker 2: important because that's where Rhys Jones made restoration a focal
15:56
Speaker 2: point of his presence, and he spent a lot of
15:58
Speaker 2: time there and established his repation as a restoration is
16:02
Speaker 2: now in retrospect, the kind of work he did is
16:07
Speaker 2: now seen as a little bit timid and passe, but
16:11
Speaker 2: for what was going on in the industry at the time,
16:15
Speaker 2: the use of those fescue mounds, for example, reclaiming some
16:19
Speaker 2: of the surface some tree management in areas that were
16:22
Speaker 2: heavily shaded that open also became for marketing purposes alone.
16:28
Speaker 2: Good reclaimed the reputation and more importantly, that word entered
16:33
Speaker 2: into the vocabulary, and that's really what started the conversation
16:39
Speaker 2: about these things. Now. The other thing that happened is
16:43
Speaker 2: that with environmental management and crackdown by the EPA and
16:49
Speaker 2: the use of chemical pesticides and basic heavy chemistry mercuries
16:58
Speaker 2: for example, and there was a concern about the overuse
17:04
Speaker 2: of chemicals on golf courses. The environmental movement was manifesting itself.
17:11
Speaker 2: There was a lot of resistance in the industry to
17:13
Speaker 2: be fair, but still people realized that from a cost
17:16
Speaker 2: management standpoint and from a toxicity level, because a lot
17:20
Speaker 2: of environments now were being tested. New York State came
17:25
Speaker 2: out with a report called Toxic Fairways in the I
17:28
Speaker 2: think mid nineties that basically was a scathing attack upon
17:33
Speaker 2: the overuse of fertilization and chemistry on Long Island golf
17:36
Speaker 2: courses where the water table, you know, golf courses were
17:40
Speaker 2: sitting on an aquifer that people were using for drinking water.
17:42
Speaker 2: So there became more of a conversation about, well, maybe
17:45
Speaker 2: we need to back off this, and then the superintendent's
17:47
Speaker 2: developed a more culturally oriented program of relying upon sunshine
17:54
Speaker 2: and wind and sand and top dressing for not organic
17:59
Speaker 2: but more or cultural practices as they were called. They
18:02
Speaker 2: were cheaper, they were efficient, they lasted longer, and so
18:06
Speaker 2: you had now a realization that there are things in
18:10
Speaker 2: the environment that we can manage without chemical applications that
18:13
Speaker 2: could help promote healthy turf. And a lot of that
18:17
Speaker 2: was simply doing shade studies. You didn't have the apps
18:22
Speaker 2: back then, but you could figure out where sunlight was
18:25
Speaker 2: and you could realize that because of the azimuth in
18:29
Speaker 2: the shoulder season the sunshine was lower, you had much
18:33
Speaker 2: more shade issues. Shade tolerance was a big issue turf grass,
18:39
Speaker 2: particularly on grain. So the superintendent's from a micromanagement standpoint,
18:44
Speaker 2: realized they needed to do something and they started paring
18:46
Speaker 2: back trees fairly modestly, but still because if you want
18:50
Speaker 2: bent grass, you need eight hours, You need eight hours
18:53
Speaker 2: of sunlight. If you're just going along with the perennial poe,
18:57
Speaker 2: you can get by on four, five, six hours. But
18:59
Speaker 2: if you want quality turf, if you want greens roll,
19:02
Speaker 2: you know, people don't realize the conditioning has changed so much.
19:05
Speaker 2: Back in nineteen seventy seven, Oakmont was the fastest golf
19:10
Speaker 2: course in the Country stip meter speed registered by the
19:13
Speaker 2: USJA was nine point eight. It was two feet ahead
19:16
Speaker 2: of Augusta National. Augusta National was averaging seven point seven.
19:21
Speaker 2: That's in nineteen seventy seven, before they converted. They're greens
19:25
Speaker 2: at Augusta. But in any case, conditioning was different. So
19:28
Speaker 2: when expectations went up and it's like we would like
19:30
Speaker 2: something faster, the new vents were a little better the old.
19:38
Speaker 2: The old perennial poem was not performing as well. Pen
19:43
Speaker 2: cross bent grass was not going to deliver anything faster
19:47
Speaker 2: than eight and a half or nine. Once you want
19:49
Speaker 2: to go to ten or eleven, you needed the new
19:52
Speaker 2: high performance bent grasses. They needed much more sunlight, they
19:55
Speaker 2: needed more top dressing. All of these converging factors and
19:59
Speaker 2: demands and expectations. Television as well. People started to see
20:04
Speaker 2: really cool golf courses on television and thought, why can't
20:07
Speaker 2: we have it at our house? You know, they kind
20:09
Speaker 2: of call it the Augusta syndrome, but it's more popular
20:12
Speaker 2: than that. It's realizing that, gee, we could be doing
20:15
Speaker 2: better than what we have and so and the other
20:21
Speaker 2: thing that happened is that superintendents became professionally trained you know,
20:24
Speaker 2: they used to be greenkeepers, make in genes in they
20:29
Speaker 2: were like farmers. I can remember when I started writing
20:33
Speaker 2: in the industry, superintendents were making thirty thirty five thousand
20:38
Speaker 2: a year maintenance budgets for two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand. Now,
20:43
Speaker 2: you know, the numbers are astronomical, But the point is
20:47
Speaker 2: that the superintendents are now professionally trained turf grass scientists,
20:50
Speaker 2: many of them, many more than ever. I would say
20:53
Speaker 2: most have four year degrees or at least they've been
20:56
Speaker 2: through a two year turf program, so they have a
20:58
Speaker 2: better understanding of war, chemistry, sunlight, the factors that are
21:03
Speaker 2: really required. And so the whole industry has changed. The
21:08
Speaker 2: professionalism has changed, set of expectations have changed, and then
21:15
Speaker 2: the sense of travel. I do think that the golf
21:18
Speaker 2: course ratings process has exposed people with better photography and
21:23
Speaker 2: video and media. People are more aware of what's going
21:28
Speaker 2: on with other courses that are really cool that they
21:30
Speaker 2: either visit or that they would dream about visiting. I
21:35
Speaker 2: think that Band in Dunes had a lot to do
21:38
Speaker 2: with it as well, because that essentially popularized the idea
21:42
Speaker 2: of links golf in a way that had previously only
21:46
Speaker 2: been available to those who had gone to Scotland. Of course,
21:50
Speaker 2: as you know, or most of us know, getting to
21:53
Speaker 2: Bandon is just as difficult as getting to Scotland, but
21:56
Speaker 2: at least it's in the United States and it doesn't
21:58
Speaker 2: involve quite the schlepp. But the availability of that kind
22:02
Speaker 2: of a golf really struck a nerve with a certain
22:05
Speaker 2: percentage of elite people who then I think became more
22:10
Speaker 2: prominent in decision making in their home course. And so
22:13
Speaker 2: what happens at every club to get to your I
22:17
Speaker 2: knew i'd get to your point, is that the people
22:19
Speaker 2: making decisions about these things were more and more exposed
22:25
Speaker 2: to a variety of golf courses that had not been
22:27
Speaker 2: the case at every club that I've been to. The
22:31
Speaker 2: people who are happiest with the old Parkland tree laced,
22:37
Speaker 2: you know, heavy polar conditions are the ones who don't travel.
22:40
Speaker 2: They've spent forty years playing this golf course. They think
22:44
Speaker 2: it's always been that way. They love it. They had
22:47
Speaker 2: their same group, they play five days a week. They
22:50
Speaker 2: remember the tree that they bounced the shot off of,
22:54
Speaker 2: or you know whatever. They remember all these things. They
22:57
Speaker 2: don't want anything to budget they're not making decisions anymore.
23:00
Speaker 2: The people making decisions are they're course raiders. They've been debandoned.
23:04
Speaker 2: They've gone to Cabot, they've gone to stream Song, they've
23:07
Speaker 2: been to Scotland, they're going to Australia now. So there's
23:10
Speaker 2: much more what I call architectural literacy. They're reading the
23:14
Speaker 2: books that we write. They understand that superintendents are professionals.
23:22
Speaker 2: They're not bossing them around. They're starting to listen to them.
23:26
Speaker 2: And the superintendents have become better about communicating and a
23:29
Speaker 2: little bolder in their articulation of their expertise and what
23:34
Speaker 2: they need. That's the other thing. They're more professional. So
23:39
Speaker 2: the people who are making decisions have changed. I think
23:42
Speaker 2: increasingly we've found that a more informed decision making apparatus
23:47
Speaker 2: has developed at these clubs, so that they're working with
23:51
Speaker 2: superintendents rather than telling them, you know, hey, you should
23:54
Speaker 2: mold the left side of the fairways wider because I'm
23:57
Speaker 2: hooking the ball and I'm tired of being in the roof.
23:59
Speaker 2: That's what you You don't see that as much. So
24:02
Speaker 2: it's a big, big change at many, many levels.
24:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just to put a bow on the historical
24:09
Speaker 1: narrative here. The rise of the superintendent, which you've referred to,
24:14
Speaker 1: or the increased prominence and education of the superintendent, is
24:17
Speaker 1: a big part of this story because now you see
24:20
Speaker 1: superintendent's the head superintendent, being often the most important and
24:25
Speaker 1: in some cases the highest paid employee of a given club.
24:30
Speaker 1: That wasn't really the case in the past. They have
24:32
Speaker 1: a lot more power now and a lot more authority,
24:37
Speaker 1: and what they're saying often is, well, listen, if you
24:41
Speaker 1: want me to use less chemicals, less inputs, less water,
24:46
Speaker 1: then we have got to get our turf in the sunlight.
24:49
Speaker 1: And if you want that turf to be of the
24:51
Speaker 1: highest quality, then it needs sunlight and air circulation. And
24:56
Speaker 1: if we have trees surrounding every hole and putting all
25:00
Speaker 1: of our turf in shade for most of the day,
25:04
Speaker 1: then we're not going to have outstanding turf conditions, especially
25:09
Speaker 1: if we want to reduce our dependency on chemicals and
25:14
Speaker 1: various other inputs. And so that's kind of the logic
25:19
Speaker 1: that has started to win the day a little bit here.
25:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the great moments I saw actually witnessed
25:27
Speaker 2: this conversation. A fella comes into the superintendent's office and says,
25:32
Speaker 2: you can't cut down the trees down? Can you manage
25:35
Speaker 2: this without the tree management? And the superintendent says, you're
25:39
Speaker 2: a dentist, right, yeah, I said, do you want to
25:42
Speaker 2: pull teeth without novercame You could do it, but you
25:45
Speaker 2: might kill the patient. And it was a great kind
25:48
Speaker 2: of response of a professional, and the guy backed off. Realized,
25:52
Speaker 2: you know, so I think the professionalization and I have
25:58
Speaker 2: to include the golf prost too, because they have you know,
26:02
Speaker 2: I noticed, starting about twenty five years ago, the PGA
26:05
Speaker 2: of America at the convention would start running seminars on architecture,
26:08
Speaker 2: on maintenance and instructing golf pros a little bit more
26:13
Speaker 2: about that component of it so that they are on
26:15
Speaker 2: the same path. And every club where there is ongoing
26:19
Speaker 2: tree management, there has to be a collaboration among the
26:22
Speaker 2: GM the golf professional, the superintendent, and the green chair.
26:25
Speaker 2: And the more they collaborate and they're starting to do that, well,
26:28
Speaker 2: they've been doing that for a long time. The architecte
26:30
Speaker 2: leads the conversation, but the professionalization of this relationship means
26:36
Speaker 2: that those people are listening to what's best for the
26:39
Speaker 2: facility rather than listening to who's going to make who
26:43
Speaker 2: on their board is going to help them keep their job.
26:46
Speaker 2: The boards are not effective in that kind of planning.
26:52
Speaker 2: Just people don't have the time, they don't have the expertise.
26:55
Speaker 2: They might have some expertise in financial management, but not
26:58
Speaker 2: in terms of the agronomics of it or in the
27:00
Speaker 2: strategic or historical site. So my job as an outsider
27:07
Speaker 2: was easy because I didn't you know, I would go
27:10
Speaker 2: in for a day or two for set fee. If
27:13
Speaker 2: they didn't like what I had to say, I don't care.
27:15
Speaker 2: I'm going to get paid anyway. So it's I had
27:18
Speaker 2: more latitude to say what I needed to say rather
27:20
Speaker 2: than someone who was a full time employee who was
27:24
Speaker 2: trying to get his kids through college and needed his job.
27:26
Speaker 2: So that gave me a tremendous freedom and I and
27:32
Speaker 2: then you begin to build allies with the resources that
27:35
Speaker 2: you have, and all of a sudden, the superintendent feels like, boy,
27:40
Speaker 2: nice to be able to talk to someone about this
27:41
Speaker 2: sort of thing because they know these things and they've
27:45
Speaker 2: got their network of some people. But that network is
27:49
Speaker 2: getting has been steadily getting bigger. So and again the
27:54
Speaker 2: travel the band and Dunes kind of experienced the television
27:57
Speaker 2: exposure of the websites that golf club, Atlas and fried
28:01
Speaker 2: Egg and that kind of conversational stream has just been
28:06
Speaker 2: absolutely crucial. I'm not pandering here those names. Your names
28:12
Speaker 2: come up all the time when I'm meeting with clubs
28:15
Speaker 2: about things that they've seen. They did not have those
28:18
Speaker 2: resources thirty years ago, so I think the social media
28:21
Speaker 2: component of it has also created a reassurance that they're
28:29
Speaker 2: on the right track.
28:37
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf is brought to you by
28:40
Speaker 1: the USGA Green Section. One of the biggest trends in
28:44
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Speaker 1: dot org. Again, that's gsshop dot USGA dot org. All right,
29:37
Speaker 1: let's get back to the episode. In any case, I
29:46
Speaker 1: want to get to some of the specific topics that
29:53
Speaker 1: are often covered in discussions of tree management programs. As
29:58
Speaker 1: we've mentioned a couple of times, Gil Hants has kind
30:01
Speaker 1: of his taxonomy where he talks about agronomic benefits, strategic
30:08
Speaker 1: or playability concerns, he talks about esthetics, he talks about safety,
30:13
Speaker 1: he talks about the history of the site, and maybe
30:16
Speaker 1: missing a couple here and there, maybe budgetary concerns factor
30:20
Speaker 1: into this as well. So I'd like to touch on
30:23
Speaker 1: some of those. I think at this point most people
30:26
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast understand the basic agronomic calculus here.
30:31
Speaker 1: If you have light, if you have air circulation, you
30:33
Speaker 1: tend to have healthier turf with less intervention necessary from
30:40
Speaker 1: the ground staff. So why don't we talk about this
30:43
Speaker 1: in terms of ecology. Trees are obviously great assets to
30:50
Speaker 1: the environment, and so there is a sort of, in
30:55
Speaker 1: my opinion, simplistic, but a very common and common sensical
31:00
Speaker 1: argument that cutting down trees is bad for the environment.
31:03
Speaker 1: So why are we doing it at golf courses. What
31:06
Speaker 1: would be your response to that line of thinking when
31:08
Speaker 1: it comes to tree management at golf courses. What are
31:12
Speaker 1: the ecological implications? How do you think all that through?
31:15
Speaker 2: Okay, so here I'm going to differ a little bit
31:17
Speaker 2: with common currency. I don't think the Oakmont conversation is
31:21
Speaker 2: actually all that helpful. I think it's paralyzing part because
31:24
Speaker 2: the numbers that I've seen are crazy. People talk about
31:27
Speaker 2: ten thousand trees coming out, nothing like that.
31:29
Speaker 1: That's not the usual. Oakmont is a kind of outlier
31:32
Speaker 1: when it comes to well tree it's not a representative example. Really.
31:36
Speaker 2: Well two things. First of all, that number is completely irresponsible,
31:38
Speaker 2: So the actual number is far fewer, and at most places,
31:43
Speaker 2: what you're talking about is about two to three percent
31:46
Speaker 2: of the tree stock that's actually there. I just finished
31:50
Speaker 2: I'm working with a landscape architect. We're teamed up in
31:53
Speaker 2: the Campanelli. We're doing the restoration of Shuttle Metal Country Club,
31:56
Speaker 2: which is Willie Park Junior's first US golf course, which
32:00
Speaker 2: is why I went to Hunter Compe to see it.
32:02
Speaker 2: And we've done a tree management plan and now we're
32:05
Speaker 2: getting criticized because we didn't do enough, and I can't
32:10
Speaker 2: exactly count the number, but roughly of about three or
32:15
Speaker 2: four thousand trees on that site, we're looking at one
32:19
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty and they're going to make a big
32:22
Speaker 2: difference because they're central, but the periphery the woods. So
32:26
Speaker 2: I think the first thing is that the Oakmont conversation
32:30
Speaker 2: makes it look like your tree you're removing all trees,
32:32
Speaker 2: whereas at most clubs. Now it varies, but in most
32:36
Speaker 2: clubs you're talking about a very marginal tweaking of the
32:39
Speaker 2: tree stock to open up views, to open up areas.
32:44
Speaker 2: But I'm I don't think it's helpful to talk about
32:48
Speaker 2: wholesale removal, and so the percentages that you're talking about
32:51
Speaker 2: are very small. The other thing is, while trees have
32:55
Speaker 2: an important ecology in terms of habitat, the cost agronomically
33:01
Speaker 2: and chemically of having them in areas where you're trying
33:04
Speaker 2: to grow turf grass produces reliance upon chemistry that infiltrates
33:09
Speaker 2: or has an impact on the environment in terms of
33:12
Speaker 2: the watershed. So you're trying to limit and remove and
33:16
Speaker 2: reduce the chemical reliance. The other thing is, of course
33:20
Speaker 2: you're going to be very mindful of certain special habitats
33:24
Speaker 2: of nesting sites of rare birds or nesting areas for
33:29
Speaker 2: eagles and egrets and so and habit water and watershed areas.
33:35
Speaker 2: So you're respecting a lot of the environmental issues. What
33:37
Speaker 2: you're dealing with is essentially the marginal intrusion of trees
33:42
Speaker 2: upon central lines of play, So the percentages are very small.
33:47
Speaker 2: The other thing is that in many cases what you're doing,
33:50
Speaker 2: I've seen lots of times where you propose an area
33:53
Speaker 2: where you're basically culling some of the trees that are
33:55
Speaker 2: impinging upon the growth patterns and the canopies of the
33:59
Speaker 2: large mature trees. And so what you're trying to do
34:04
Speaker 2: is essentially allow the more mature specimens to thrive because
34:10
Speaker 2: right now they're constricted either at the root there's root girdling,
34:13
Speaker 2: or there's a constrict of habit of the canopies. So
34:17
Speaker 2: you're kind of helping open up the area for more
34:20
Speaker 2: air movement than sunlight so that these trees can thrive.
34:26
Speaker 2: And so that's a big component of it as well.
34:31
Speaker 1: And often the native trees as well. Right if you
34:34
Speaker 1: have a bunch of non native trees surrounding an original
34:38
Speaker 1: indigenous tree, and you're remove the non natives around it,
34:42
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the original native tree might be
34:46
Speaker 1: in a place to thrive.
34:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. So all of those are components of the responsible
34:52
Speaker 2: tree management. Okay, and that's why I don't the olkmont
34:56
Speaker 2: one is scarce people off. Rightly, that's not what's usually intended. Now,
35:01
Speaker 2: there are cases where it might be appropriate to do that,
35:06
Speaker 2: but and but that's an extreme exception.
35:14
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some playability or strategic issues. Again. I
35:20
Speaker 1: think there's a broad understanding that tree removal on classic
35:25
Speaker 1: golf courses that were designed to use with an angles
35:30
Speaker 1: restores those with an angles. If you have a dog
35:33
Speaker 1: leg hole to the right and you put in trees
35:37
Speaker 1: on the inside of that dog leg, the risk reward
35:40
Speaker 1: equation of trying to cut the dog leg is no
35:42
Speaker 1: longer there. That's a basic example. You remove the trees,
35:46
Speaker 1: you get back some options and some strategic complexity. That's appealing. Again,
35:50
Speaker 1: I think I think most people understand that at this point.
35:54
Speaker 1: Something that's interesting though to me is that there is
35:59
Speaker 1: another brand of this discussion that has to do with
36:02
Speaker 1: how golf courses are played by elite players. Now, if
36:07
Speaker 1: you take away trees from a golf course. Then elite
36:11
Speaker 1: players are especially now with the equipment that they use
36:14
Speaker 1: and the way that they hit the ball, are going
36:16
Speaker 1: to feast on most of those golf courses. If you
36:19
Speaker 1: don't constrict their line of play in some way or another,
36:22
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be tough for the golf course
36:24
Speaker 1: to defend itself. And I think a lot of people
36:27
Speaker 1: looked at Roy McElroy in the fourth round at the
36:30
Speaker 1: Masters and looked at his The most memorable shots that
36:35
Speaker 1: he hit that day one on the seventh hole where
36:38
Speaker 1: he kind of had to hit this miraculous shot around
36:41
Speaker 1: the trees to get to the green, and then of
36:43
Speaker 1: course on the fifteenth hole, where he had to shape
36:47
Speaker 1: a I don't even think it was a long iron.
36:49
Speaker 1: I think you hit a seven hour, but you know
36:53
Speaker 1: the thing with two and thirty yards or whatever it was.
36:56
Speaker 1: And but that shot only existed because those trees were there. Now,
37:01
Speaker 1: in the original design of Augusta National, you would have
37:04
Speaker 1: seen a couple of trees in approximately that position in
37:07
Speaker 1: the fifteenth fairway, but most of the fifteenth fairway would
37:10
Speaker 1: have been way more open, of course, and then those
37:12
Speaker 1: trees on the seventh hole that he played around wouldn't
37:16
Speaker 1: have been there initially. So I think people looked at
37:18
Speaker 1: those shots and said, well, trees have to be good
37:23
Speaker 1: for strategy, at least for elite players because or at
37:26
Speaker 1: least for the interest of the golf tournament. They have
37:28
Speaker 1: to be good because if they weren't there, then we
37:30
Speaker 1: wouldn't have gotten those shots. So I wonder how you
37:34
Speaker 1: balance in your thinking opening up strategic lines of play
37:40
Speaker 1: versus retaining some challenger the opportunity for spectacular recovery from
37:47
Speaker 1: great players.
37:48
Speaker 2: So the first thing I would tell you is that
37:51
Speaker 2: the trees you're talking about that were influential, particularly on fifteenth,
37:56
Speaker 2: that's a couple of trees somewhere the elite player hits
38:02
Speaker 2: the ball in the air. So if you're if your
38:05
Speaker 2: if your dominant obstacle is trying to create a hazard
38:11
Speaker 2: that an elite player has to deal with, the last
38:14
Speaker 2: thing you want to do is create a sixty foot
38:18
Speaker 2: high wall that they're going to hit over it anyway.
38:21
Speaker 2: If you have a big corner dog leg and it's
38:23
Speaker 2: two forty to carry, they'll launch it over there anyway.
38:26
Speaker 2: Whereas you're actually punishing the high handicapper or the mid
38:30
Speaker 2: handicapper much more because they can't hit it that high.
38:33
Speaker 2: They're chipping out all the time. So the first thing
38:36
Speaker 2: is if trees are your dominant form, if they're the
38:39
Speaker 2: dominant form of a hazard for creating interest, you're actually
38:45
Speaker 2: counterproductive by using trees in that way. The second thing is,
38:51
Speaker 2: I don't really think it's a helpful guide to use
38:54
Speaker 2: a tournament course as your guide for your every day
38:58
Speaker 2: golf course because that event takes place once a year.
39:02
Speaker 2: So I you know, how should it with this? At
39:06
Speaker 2: most clubs, one percent of play, no more than that
39:09
Speaker 2: takes place from the back teem. So if you're designing
39:12
Speaker 2: a golf course for the back te player in some
39:15
Speaker 2: big event, you've got your priorities wrong and you're going
39:18
Speaker 2: to go bankrop. So I like to think primarily of
39:20
Speaker 2: how is this going to play for the fee paying
39:22
Speaker 2: everyday golfer, and then where you can you put these
39:26
Speaker 2: elements in that for an event or for an elite player.
39:30
Speaker 2: But the most effective way to defeat an elite player
39:33
Speaker 2: is not in the air. It's on the ground. Because golf,
39:36
Speaker 2: my little mantra took me years to develop. This is
39:39
Speaker 2: that golf course architecture is what happens when the ball
39:42
Speaker 2: hits the ground. It's going to kick some way at
39:46
Speaker 2: oakmand it's going to get eaten up in the rough.
39:49
Speaker 2: It's going to kind of get some weird bounce that
39:51
Speaker 2: you might think is unfair. But by opening up contour,
39:56
Speaker 2: you create uncertainty. Whereas the elite player can pretty much
40:01
Speaker 2: dominate aerial space. They know where it's going. They have
40:03
Speaker 2: a launch monitor that every shot they're registering now, they
40:06
Speaker 2: know the spin rate, they know exactly how far it's
40:09
Speaker 2: going within one or two yards on irons. So if
40:13
Speaker 2: you focus on the aerial component to defeat a player,
40:17
Speaker 2: I think you're misguided and you're actually punishing the higher handicapper.
40:22
Speaker 2: The second thing is that the ground contour is what
40:25
Speaker 2: is most determinative. And finally, the hardest thing for a
40:31
Speaker 2: golf for a good golfer to do is to create
40:36
Speaker 2: a target when you get I'll put it this way.
40:40
Speaker 2: My favorite example seventeenth augusta National. They lost the part
40:45
Speaker 2: for they lost the Eisenhower Tree, which is about two
40:48
Speaker 2: to ten down the left side, which hung out over
40:50
Speaker 2: the fairway, and everybody said, oh my god, they're going
40:54
Speaker 2: to eat up the golf course. It's going to change it.
40:57
Speaker 2: So what happened. Average scoring didn't change, but the range
41:01
Speaker 2: of scores changed so that you had more birdies and
41:04
Speaker 2: more bogies because previously, with that Eisenhower tree, you either
41:09
Speaker 2: hit a little light cut or you took a three.
41:12
Speaker 2: Elite players hit three, which because they're desperately trying to
41:15
Speaker 2: hit the fairway. That tree is gone. The target area
41:18
Speaker 2: is larger, more of them hitting drivers. Some of them
41:22
Speaker 2: land in the adjacent in the adjoining I think seventh hole,
41:27
Speaker 2: others bail out to the right. So the actual impact
41:32
Speaker 2: on scoring was more diverse scoring. Although the average didn't change,
41:37
Speaker 2: the diversity of the scoring did. So. Gill showed Gil
41:41
Speaker 2: Hands showed me this at the TPC Boston. Once he
41:44
Speaker 2: showed me the data for the ninth hole, the par
41:46
Speaker 2: four doug let. He said, the wider they opened it
41:49
Speaker 2: and the more room there was, by definition, the fairway
41:53
Speaker 2: was a smaller percentage of the available space you were
41:56
Speaker 2: looking at. The more difficult or the more the less
41:59
Speaker 2: people a fair way that the ball wandered because they
42:02
Speaker 2: weren't able to focus, so they felt that they had
42:05
Speaker 2: more freedom. It was more difficult for them, so you're
42:08
Speaker 2: actually for the elite player, and they are in a
42:11
Speaker 2: completely different world. We're not talking about three four handicappers here.
42:14
Speaker 2: We're talking about plus six's and plus sevens who know
42:18
Speaker 2: exactly within one or two yards where their shots are going,
42:24
Speaker 2: and for them, the trees are less of an obstacle
42:29
Speaker 2: than the ground contours that they're dealing with.
42:31
Speaker 1: So I think, especially if it's firm, what elite players
42:35
Speaker 1: really don't like is that if they don't know what's
42:36
Speaker 1: happening once the ball lands. But I think you know
42:39
Speaker 1: what you're saying about the effect on elite players versus
42:42
Speaker 1: regular players of trees is really important to point out
42:46
Speaker 1: because that's an argument that many Golden Age architects made
42:50
Speaker 1: about trees. To them, trees were not a desirable hazard
42:55
Speaker 1: to use constantly because they are a relatively inequitable hazard,
43:00
Speaker 1: as in, they affect regular players more than they affect
43:05
Speaker 1: really good players. And the goal, the goal that a
43:08
Speaker 1: lot of Golden Age architects had was to figure out
43:11
Speaker 1: how to design courses that were fun to play, that
43:13
Speaker 1: were playable for regular players but still challenging for elite players.
43:17
Speaker 1: So you tried to find elements that were hard for
43:21
Speaker 1: elite players to navigate, but not, you know, necessarily preventative
43:25
Speaker 1: to a good time for regular players. And trees are
43:30
Speaker 1: pretty much exactly the opposite of that because.
43:33
Speaker 2: They dictate a line of play. As soon as you
43:35
Speaker 2: dictate a line of play, you take away the strategic flexibility.
43:38
Speaker 2: Just as it's a whole other conversation if you want
43:41
Speaker 2: to make a green interesting, take away the bunkers, because
43:45
Speaker 2: then the elite player has to think. As soon as
43:47
Speaker 2: they start thinking, they're in trouble, whereas myself mid handicapper
43:50
Speaker 2: would much prefer chipping or putting on short grass. Now
43:54
Speaker 2: that's a separate conversation, but to the extent that trees
43:58
Speaker 2: dictate a line of play. Having said that, tilling Has
44:02
Speaker 2: has a wonderful drawing that he provides in one of
44:04
Speaker 2: his articles from the twenties early twenties, and he says,
44:07
Speaker 2: there's a proper way to do a tree clearing. He
44:09
Speaker 2: shows a straight line with trees on each edge, you know,
44:14
Speaker 2: and he says that's not going to create any interest.
44:16
Speaker 2: He says, show that there's a slice opportunity where you
44:21
Speaker 2: open up the tree line on the right, there's a
44:23
Speaker 2: deeper one on the left. Have some variety in the
44:25
Speaker 2: tree line to conform to the way shots roll, so
44:28
Speaker 2: that you can recover. It was the art of recovery.
44:32
Speaker 2: And that's why if the trees are scattered, not dense forest,
44:37
Speaker 2: but if they're scattered light. You know, you think about
44:39
Speaker 2: Mickelson's famous shot on the thirteenth of Augusta, the six
44:43
Speaker 2: iron he hit to the green on the Saturday and
44:46
Speaker 2: the Masters that he won. He didn't make the putt,
44:48
Speaker 2: but it was a fantastic escape. It's only possible because
44:52
Speaker 2: there's room and a possibility. The most boring shot in
44:57
Speaker 2: the world is getting down with forearn and hitting it
45:01
Speaker 2: out sideways. That's not strategy, that's not a shot, the
45:04
Speaker 2: opportunity to create an escape, and so a lot of
45:08
Speaker 2: that has to do with the density of trees. You know.
45:12
Speaker 2: The right side of eleven at Augusta National, to me
45:15
Speaker 2: is a nightmare because there's a solid wall that they
45:21
Speaker 2: planted which obstructs, by the way, the view of spectators,
45:24
Speaker 2: and yet they left enough of an alleyway to the
45:27
Speaker 2: right of it. Tiger Woods always seemed to bail out
45:29
Speaker 2: there and then hit a shot. That is such an
45:33
Speaker 2: ill thought out way to go about the tree on
45:37
Speaker 2: fifteen on the left, brilliant thinning out the tree so
45:40
Speaker 2: that you have the opportunity to play that is appropriate.
45:46
Speaker 2: So those are the elements that also go into these
45:48
Speaker 2: sort of things.
45:49
Speaker 1: Scattered trees can be a very compelling hazard. And you know,
45:52
Speaker 1: even if you I know, there's a quote that everybody
45:55
Speaker 1: likes to take from Alistair McKenzie that talks about how
45:59
Speaker 1: these straight lines of tree down every side of the
46:01
Speaker 1: fairway or are not desirable. But mackenzie goes on to say,
46:05
Speaker 1: in a less quoted passage, well if you have scattered trees,
46:09
Speaker 1: if you have kind of these isolated little copses and
46:12
Speaker 1: things like that, those can be really really interesting. And
46:15
Speaker 1: so I think there's it's it's very important to introduce
46:18
Speaker 1: nuance to this discussion. It's not about clear cutting versus forest.
46:22
Speaker 1: There's an in between a state for a lot of
46:26
Speaker 1: golf courses that can be the ideal solution. All right. Finally,
46:29
Speaker 1: here I'd like to touch on aesthetics. This is such
46:32
Speaker 1: an interesting topic to me because the again there's a
46:36
Speaker 1: common sensical argument here that seems persuasive at first, but
46:40
Speaker 1: but might not be after further analysis. Many people might
46:44
Speaker 1: say trees are beautiful, therefore taking them down necessarily makes
46:49
Speaker 1: a golf course less beautiful. How do you go about
46:53
Speaker 1: responding to that.
46:55
Speaker 2: Well, the trees are not the golf course. So the
46:58
Speaker 2: really beautiful part part of being on a golf course
47:01
Speaker 2: is scanning the horizon line. Your eye moves left to right,
47:07
Speaker 2: and by the way, as the evidence of this to
47:12
Speaker 2: I love giving this example. I've done this all the
47:14
Speaker 2: time in lectures. When you have newscasters, you got the older,
47:16
Speaker 2: scruffy guy on the left and the beautiful young woman
47:19
Speaker 2: on the right. Your eye is always moving this way.
47:22
Speaker 2: In horror films, your eye is moving left to right,
47:25
Speaker 2: so the knife always comes in from the right. And Psycho,
47:28
Speaker 2: when Janet Ye gets killed in the shower, she's coming
47:31
Speaker 2: in from the left and the knife's coming in from
47:33
Speaker 2: the right. And the impact of your eye moving is
47:37
Speaker 2: part of the esthetic experience. That these these are actually
47:41
Speaker 2: true physiological components of the human body. The beauty of
47:45
Speaker 2: a golf course is when you can scan the horizon line.
47:49
Speaker 2: So that Dunlop White talks about raising the canopy, and he's.
47:56
Speaker 1: Lop White, the great longtime green chairman at Old Town Club.
48:01
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And He wrote about this a long time ago,
48:05
Speaker 2: about raising the canopy so you don't need to remove trees,
48:09
Speaker 2: but you can trim up the canopy so that you
48:11
Speaker 2: can see the horizon line and get a feel for
48:14
Speaker 2: how the land moves. A solid wall. You go to
48:17
Speaker 2: northern Minnesota and look at a solid wall of pine trees.
48:20
Speaker 2: There's nothing particularly beautiful about that. What's great is when
48:23
Speaker 2: you can when you're in the woods, then you see
48:27
Speaker 2: the sunlight and the clouds and the color of the
48:30
Speaker 2: sky through that. So that's the beauty of it. But
48:34
Speaker 2: an undifferentiated woodland that doesn't have the character so that
48:39
Speaker 2: you want to thin it out, open it up, raise
48:42
Speaker 2: the canopy being able to move this way, that's the
48:46
Speaker 2: beautiful part. And also the occasional view behind where you have,
48:53
Speaker 2: say an infinity edge, so you have this dramatic you
48:57
Speaker 2: know you're in North Carolina in the mountains and you
48:59
Speaker 2: have a and behind it is just miles of sky
49:03
Speaker 2: or ocean. I think about the at Sebonic, the fifteenth
49:07
Speaker 2: hole of the par five, where they gradually lifted the
49:10
Speaker 2: canopy behind so that you now have this beautiful vista
49:14
Speaker 2: of a great pliconic bay behind the green that they
49:17
Speaker 2: didn't have until they thinned that out. So what you're
49:20
Speaker 2: trying to do is use the landscape features as a
49:24
Speaker 2: canvas and not simply impose this vertical structure upon it,
49:29
Speaker 2: because that doesn't have any kind of distinctive, site specific
49:33
Speaker 2: esthetic to it. So a lot of it depends on
49:36
Speaker 2: what you're looking at and what's there and what you're hiding.
49:39
Speaker 2: But exposing that and allowing golfers to see that from
49:42
Speaker 2: various vantage points, that to me is where the beauty
49:46
Speaker 2: and the variety of a golf course come out. It's
49:51
Speaker 2: the most varied canvas of any sports field. The only
49:56
Speaker 2: regulation for the esthetic is or the structure is that
50:00
Speaker 2: the whole you're playing to is four and a quarter
50:02
Speaker 2: inches across. Everything else varies. You might as well utilize
50:06
Speaker 2: that opportunity to experience the landform and the sensibility of
50:10
Speaker 2: where you are as part of that. And if you
50:12
Speaker 2: rely upon trees to create the curtain, you know, you
50:17
Speaker 2: might as well be in a in a darkened room
50:21
Speaker 2: for all that matters. You lose the sense of place
50:24
Speaker 2: and of what's special about the golf course.
50:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what you're talking about right now, the term
50:30
Speaker 1: of art for it is view shed, which is and
50:34
Speaker 1: that is the idea that you can you can see
50:36
Speaker 1: across a landscape or have a long view from from
50:40
Speaker 1: multiple different vantage points, and that is that is beautiful.
50:44
Speaker 1: That's the thing is that there's there are different kinds
50:47
Speaker 1: of beauty. The beauty of an individual tree is undeniable.
50:50
Speaker 1: But but but certainly when you're on a golf course,
50:54
Speaker 1: the ability to see, to have that view shed is
50:59
Speaker 1: a power esthetic experience. And I think that's that's probably
51:03
Speaker 1: the factor that makes a lot of club members who
51:05
Speaker 1: might initially oppose a tree program eventually endorse it once
51:10
Speaker 1: they discover the wonders of the view shed. Then then
51:13
Speaker 1: it's all over. Then they're suggesting more trees that can
51:16
Speaker 1: be taken out because they have that kind of emotional
51:19
Speaker 1: experience of being able to see across.
51:21
Speaker 2: The views you have, they're either exterior or interior. They're
51:25
Speaker 2: either you know, whistling straight or looking at the lake
51:29
Speaker 2: or at aronomank. You're looking across the beauty of that
51:34
Speaker 2: slope and the holds behind it, so that you have
51:38
Speaker 2: to sort of decide what it is you're revealing. But
51:40
Speaker 2: it can be one or two or both that's available
51:43
Speaker 2: to you.
51:44
Speaker 1: Sorry, No, that's the great point. I was going to
51:47
Speaker 1: add that there's a there's an interesting issue also of
51:49
Speaker 1: scale here where, And I just saw an example this
51:55
Speaker 1: this morning. We're recording this the week of the US Open,
51:58
Speaker 1: and this morning Might Clay and the great Australian player
52:03
Speaker 1: and architect, just posted a before and after photo of
52:07
Speaker 1: the thirteenth hole at the Addington in England. And there's
52:12
Speaker 1: you know, the before photo has the tree very closely
52:15
Speaker 1: enclosed by has the hole very closely enclosed by trees.
52:19
Speaker 1: And then the second photos not every tree has been removed,
52:22
Speaker 1: but it has been opened up. And to me, in
52:26
Speaker 1: the second photo, the land looks way bigger. It looks
52:30
Speaker 1: bigger in scale, and part of the reason for that
52:34
Speaker 1: is that the trees are no longer overwhelming the scale
52:38
Speaker 1: of the land. The land as all of a sudden
52:41
Speaker 1: the bigger thing, or is at least competing with the
52:45
Speaker 1: scale of the trees, and so all of a sudden
52:48
Speaker 1: the golf hole doesn't look dinky anymore. It looks more
52:52
Speaker 1: grand by a lot. And that's another effect of tree
52:57
Speaker 1: removal that has that I think is it's something it's
53:00
Speaker 1: hard to understand unless you have actual on the ground
53:04
Speaker 1: experience of that before and after.
53:06
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, yeah. I always I have this secret theory
53:09
Speaker 2: that at country clubs people started, they didn't really want
53:14
Speaker 2: to see their business partners, they didn't want to see
53:16
Speaker 2: who else was sleeping with the you know, their spouses.
53:19
Speaker 2: They wanted to just have this little isolated thing because
53:22
Speaker 2: they really were kind of grumpy about stuff, and they
53:24
Speaker 2: got so used to this narrow view that they forgot
53:26
Speaker 2: where they were. And it's it's just now we're allowing
53:30
Speaker 2: them in this grander view. I think of Inwood Country
53:34
Speaker 2: Club on Long Island. There's just a fantastic example. When
53:37
Speaker 2: I grew up there caddying, it was tree lined and
53:39
Speaker 2: you had no idea of downtown Manhattan, you had no
53:42
Speaker 2: idea of the marshland, you had no idea of the
53:45
Speaker 2: transition of the terrain through those landforms. And now it's
53:51
Speaker 2: the vital part of the golf course experience. It's just
53:54
Speaker 2: completely changes your sense of what you're doing while you're
53:57
Speaker 2: playing golf.
53:59
Speaker 1: So looking towards the few sure here, do you think
54:03
Speaker 1: I think there's a sense out there that that that
54:05
Speaker 1: tree management has won and that maybe even we've gone
54:09
Speaker 1: a little bit too far. And that in some courses
54:12
Speaker 1: we've removed too many trees. Where where do you come
54:16
Speaker 1: down on that? Do you think there is still a
54:18
Speaker 1: significant amount of work to be done, both both culturally
54:21
Speaker 1: and practically at golf courses toward the goal of tree management,
54:27
Speaker 1: or do you think that that there's a moment here
54:30
Speaker 1: when we can start to step back and say, how
54:34
Speaker 1: can we restore some trees to some of these landscapes
54:39
Speaker 1: that that might be calling out for them. Where do
54:41
Speaker 1: you land on that or is it just a club
54:43
Speaker 1: by club thing?
54:44
Speaker 2: Well? I am sensitive to the view. I know a
54:48
Speaker 2: number of architects have sort of tried to sit this
54:50
Speaker 2: one out and think, well, this is just a fad.
54:53
Speaker 2: This is like you know, island greens, or railroad ties
54:59
Speaker 2: or or drivable four parts. And I don't think it's
55:02
Speaker 2: that way, because I think the agronomic benefits, the management benefits,
55:08
Speaker 2: and the esthetic beauty that results is so transformative and
55:13
Speaker 2: so unique to the nature of the golf as a
55:18
Speaker 2: sports field that I think we're more or less this
55:23
Speaker 2: is where we are going to be, and then it's
55:25
Speaker 2: a matter of refining that. I do think that a
55:29
Speaker 2: lot of attention needs to be paid to how the
55:31
Speaker 2: site evolved on a case by case basis. I do
55:34
Speaker 2: think that's important. And again I go back to what
55:36
Speaker 2: Gill says. I was there when he was making a
55:39
Speaker 2: pitch to do the restoration of Worcester Country Club, where
55:43
Speaker 2: I just was. Last week they had the centenary of
55:46
Speaker 2: the twenty five US Open and this is back a
55:50
Speaker 2: few years ago, and they said are They asked Gill,
55:54
Speaker 2: of all people, are you an expert in what Donald
55:56
Speaker 2: Ross did? He says, I'm going to be an expert
55:58
Speaker 2: in what Donald Ross did to Worcester Country Club. And
56:01
Speaker 2: it was the perfect answer. And so that's what architects
56:04
Speaker 2: need to do. That's why I resist the notion of
56:09
Speaker 2: a certain expertise that you're so used to what so
56:13
Speaker 2: and so did that you know what he did. Everywhere
56:15
Speaker 2: That formula didn't play very well. I think the architects
56:20
Speaker 2: now who have come up either through the ranks or
56:25
Speaker 2: who have matured from the big companies and gone off
56:28
Speaker 2: on their own, I think a lot of them are
56:31
Speaker 2: much more attentive to the specifics of that site, that history,
56:35
Speaker 2: that evolution, and on a case by case basis. Having
56:41
Speaker 2: said that, I do see there's a need for tree
56:46
Speaker 2: replacement of existing trees. There's a need for tree planning
56:50
Speaker 2: and tree management really is a sustained commitment, not just
56:53
Speaker 2: about removal. It's not just a euphemism for removal. It
56:57
Speaker 2: requires a really comprehensive plan, you know, attention to the
57:01
Speaker 2: health and safety of the mature trees, including the elm
57:05
Speaker 2: trees that are still there. So I do think it
57:10
Speaker 2: requires a little bit more, a lot more than the
57:13
Speaker 2: notion of tree removal. It's planning what the landscape is
57:17
Speaker 2: going to look like. You know. Frederick Lahlmsted this when
57:20
Speaker 2: he built Central Park, and all of his planning was
57:23
Speaker 2: about anticipating thirty forty years of how that site would evolve,
57:28
Speaker 2: not just what it's going to be today. So that
57:32
Speaker 2: requires considerable technical training and planning.
57:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Brad, thank you for coming on the podcast.
57:38
Speaker 1: Always want to talk to you.
57:40
Speaker 2: Pleasure.
57:48
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57:53
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