hello everyone

i was lucky last week at lowes and found 2 maple boards with pretty heavy curl. they were right in front too. anyway im building a small table with the maple for the table top aprons and legs and rosewood breadboard ends. I needed to flatten and plane the maple to get it to size and its tearing badly. whats the best way to smooth out this kind of figure? Im thinking a card scraper or well tuned plane (neither of which do i own yet). I really dont want to sand away on this forever but i dont want to dare ruining these boards either.

thanks!