Tree or bunker in wrong place?

Trees and bunkers don't get along very well together. Bunkers are hazards on a golf course to penalize a bad shot. A successful shot hit from a bunker is hard enough just hitting off a good lie. Could you hit that same shot from a lie on the sand sitting on top of a one inch wide tree root? I would call that situation double trouble. Chances are that if you hit a drive into one of our fairway bunkers at Glendale, your ball will be resting on top of a tree root just under the surface of the sand. We have six fairway bunkers at Glendale, located on holes 4, 5, and 8. Each one of these bunkers is full of roots just below the surface of the sand, coming from an adjacent tree. These trees are too close to the bunkers. Keeping tree roots out of the bunkers is impossible to maintain. We can pull them out, but we'll miss some and more will be back soon. The real problem is golfer safety. Someone could easily get hurt if their club catches a root while hitting a shot. Check out the photo below of the root in the fairway bunker on the 5th hole. This is typical of the roots found in our bunkers.

The next photo below shows the roots we removed from a small area in the left corner of the left side fairway bunker, on the 4th hole.

A weed is defined as a plant out of place. A tomato plant in a corn field is a weed, and so is a tree in a bunker. In this case the trees are out of place, and in my opinion, the only long term solution is to remove the trees due to the safety issues they create. This issue will be brought up and discussed at the next Green Committee meeting, on July 18, 2012.