Why Is My Golf Club Cutting Down Trees?

Woodland management seems to be becoming more and more prominent at golf courses up and down the country.

Many golfers love the look of a treelined hole but understand that the removal of trees allows more sunlight onto putting surfaces and tee boxes to help with the health of the turf. However, one of the main reasons why woodland management is being seen more frequently in the modern day is actually because some of the chemicals greenkeepers formerly used to maintain courses have now been banned.

Greenkeepers and course managers are now tasked with keeping their surfaces healthy via predominantly natural ways, hence why more sunlight and airflow to greens has to be a necessity - which sometimes has to be created via cutting down trees. Turf that holds moisture tends to feature high levels of organic matter, which can lead to disease, and this is why course managers hollow tine and sand greens.

Another reason why some courses may opt for woodland management programmes is to restore their courses to how they formerly looked and played in the early 20th century. This is particularly common at some of the best heathland golf courses where previous open vast heathland holes became more treelined over time.

"There's a lot more pressure on greenkeepers with disease pressure because of moisture management and so if the greens are damp for longer they’ve got more chance of being susceptible to disease," Wallasey Golf Club's Course Manager John Mcloughlin tells Golf Monthly on woodland management. "What we find is a lot of golf greens and tees are heavily surrounded by trees, which prevents light and prevents air movements, which is critical.

"The disease pressure is so high that the greens end up being diseased, scarred and not running truly so it is really important that the green surfaces are free from shades of trees and air movement because of the high disease pressure.

"In the past there were chemicals and fungicides that allowed greenkeepers to spray the greens with chemicals on a weekly or monthly basis to keep the disease at bay. A lot of the fungicides and chemicals have now been banned, so in the past where we could maybe get away with it a little bit more because we had different chemicals we could spray, they're no longer available.

"So being able to culturally manage the playing surfaces by removing trees and creating air flow and sunlight is vital now. So there has been a big drive on taking trees out."