Mother Nature is indifferent and takes no prisoners.  I can recall when the cypress tree on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach died a natural death.  That tree had guarded the 18th for many a year and often prohibited players from reaching the closing hole in 2 shots.  After a few years without the tree, the Pebble Beach Company decided to harvest a similar tree from the fourth hole in the hopes that it would be willing to be transplanted and become the new custodian of Pebble’s 18th hole.  I can recall playing with Arnold Palmer on the first day that the tree welcomed a foursome and it was only natural that Arnold Palmer would be the first player to experience the 18th with a new tree.  The transplant was a success and the hole has been recreated from it’s initial design.

Mother Nature  struck again and this time it claimed the life of the venerable tree at the rear of the 14th hole on the Dunes Course at Monterey Peninsula Country Club.    The tree was a symbol of more than golf.  It stood permanently hunched by the gusts off the Pacific Ocean into a permanent symbol and marker for Point Joe on the 17 Mile Drive.  The tree survived a multitude of storms over the years and it seems that Mother Nature was sparing the existence of this tree despite violent storms that often rumpled across the Pacific into the Monterey Peninsula.  The 14th is the only hole on the Monterey Peninsula that sits directly on the water facing the Pacific Ocean.  Two years ago the hole itself was awash in tides that moved boulders from the seaside onto the venerable Par 3 hole.  Pictures of club staff running from the waves for their lives became etched in the minds of the golfing public that have experienced this glorious hole.  The tree had survived that onslaught seemed impervious to additional risk.  However in December 2024, this would not be the case as a series of very high winds smashed into the Monterey Peninsula and eventually felled the beacon of Point Joe.  The high winds did considerable damage throughout the peninsula and also split the iconic tree into pieces so it had to be removed.  It seemed that the tree survived storms that were worse than this one, but luck ran out for this tree.  It is very strange playing the hole without the tree although it was never in play but it just doesn’t seem to be the same hole without it.    The marker placed under the tree commemorating the life of Bob Zoller MPCC’s wonderful greenskeeper now sits alone at the base of the what was the trunk of the tree.  Undoubtedly the club will figure out how to replace and replant a tree on this hole, it seems to be impossible to replicate the state of the tree as it stood bent into the winds that consistently shaped it and eventually killed it.  Any newcomer will have to incur the wrath of many future storms in order to recreate the unique shape of the tree that had survived for many years into its shape as a wind-blown beacon.