Google search: excerpted from
http://jayflemma.thegolfspace.com/?p=259 , but I saw it in person in 79 (and a drunken Jim McKay), and read about it in the Blade, "One of Americas's Greatest Newspapers" (per Abe Lincoln)
THE HINKLE TREE – COLOR AND CONTROVERSY FROM THE START
Strantz’s career began with a colorful moment in golf history. Perhaps it was an omen, a microcosm. He was working at Inverness Country Club in Ohio when the 1979 U.S. Open came to town. Tom Fazio was renovating the course for the U.S.G.A. A glitch in set up would provide the impetus for Strantz’s brief, but luminescent career.
On the first day, journeyman pro Lon Hinkle came to the par-5 eighth tee already out of contention. The seventeenth fairway runs parallel to the left, separated by a string of tall trees. Hinkle, feeling a bit puckish and having nothing to lose, noticed a gap about twenty-five feet wide about two hundred yards away from the teebox. “Take down the gallery ropes. Tell the guys on seventeen I’m playing through” he quipped.
Hinkle smashed his drive well into the seventeenth fairway, leaving a mere eight-iron back over the trees to the green. Word spread like wildfire and – surprise! – everyone else followed suit.
Late that night, U.S.G.A. officials had a secret meeting on the eighth tee. Comments were made about the “integrity of the hole” and “playing the right way” and such. Steps were paced off, arms were waved, comments were snarled and discussions ended with soon to be short lived smugness.
The next morning when the patrons arrived at the eighth tee, they were greeted by a strange sight. About twenty-five feet away from the teebox stood a short, droopy, frumpy looking newly planted Douglas Fir. A sign hung from one patchy, spindly arm – “A Hinkle Tree.”
Strantz was elated when asked about it. “I planted that tree!” he shouted gleefully. “I backed in the trucks! I tried to tell them to move it a little bit, buuuuuut…” he trails off with a mischievous grin. The gap was not truly plugged, just reduced to about eight feet.
Strantz’s protestations proved prophetic. Hinkle arrived on the tee later that day with a huge gallery. “Trees sure grow fast in Ohio” he joked. Then without missing a beat he drawled “Take down the gallery ropes.”
There was thunderous applause.
The gap through which to hit was still 200 yards away, but the Hinkle tree, looking as pathetic than the tree in “A Charlie Brown Christmas Special” never had a chance. Hinkle easily carried deep into the seventeenth fairway.
There was even more thunderous applause. He again hit the par-5 in two.