Hinkle plants his place in golf history

America At Large: When the Lucas County health department dropped in on a Toledo mortuary for a routine unannounced inspection last week, they were startled to discover a pile of eight unburied corpses fermenting in a shack behind the funeral home, writes George Kimball.

Some of the bodies were in state of such advanced decomposition that they
have yet to be identified, but the mystery could be partially resolved
this morning, should any of the participants in the US Senior Open down
the street at the Inverness Club fail to materialise for his appointed
tee-time.

Arnold Palmer was spotted several times around the clubhouse yesterday and has thus been ruled out as one of the mystery decedents.

The lure of $2.6 million in prize money has brought the old-timers
flocking to Toledo this week.

Hale Irwin, the leading money winner on the recently-renamed "Champions
Tour", won't be in attendance (stretchered off the course after suffering
back spasms at the US Open two weeks ago, Irwin withdrew earlier this
week), but 156 of the world's best senior golfers (Des Smyth and Christy
O'Connor Jnr among them) are playing.

The star of the show, though, figures to be Inverness itself.

The venerable 100-year-old layout has hosted seven Major championships.
Byron Nelson spent five years, from 1940-45, as the head professional at
Inverness.

Frank Stranahan, America's best amateur golfer between Bobby Jones and
Tiger Woods, was an Inverness member. In 1986 I stood beside Inverness'
18th green and watched Bob Tway hole a bunker shot to win the PGA
Championship.

(The memory frozen in time from that moment isn't watching the ball
disappear into the hole, but the expression on Greg Norman's face when it
did.)

Golfing history figures to be frequently evoked this week, and in fact has
been from the moment the senior golfers started drifting into town.

Lon Hinkle, for instance, has been interviewed more times this week than
he had been in the previous 20 years.

Inverness was initially created by an obscure designer named Bernard
Nichols, who laid out a nine-hole course in 1903. Thirteen years later the
renowned Donald Ross was engaged to build the present course, and another
noted architect, Arthur Hills (a Toledo resident and Inverness member, by
the way) re-tooled the course preparatory to the 1993 US Open. But it was
Hinkle who was singlehandedly responsible for a make-over undertaken in
mid-tournament during playing of the 1979 US Open. His handiwork, unlike
that of, say, Bernard Nichols, remains in evidence to this day.

A journeyman pro who won three tournaments in 1978 and 1979 and hasn't won
since, Hinkle hasn't had the greatest luck on the Champions circuit,
either, entering just three events this year, and finishing 32nd, 65th,
and 72nd. He had to play his way into the Senior Open as a qualifier, but
once he did, he brought his bit of history with him.

"I'd finished second in Los Angeles and won the Crosby, so I came here as
a real legitimate contender that year," recalled Hinkle, who found himself
paired in the first two rounds with the colourful Juan Antonio (Chi Chi)
Rodriguez.

The group had a substantial wait on the tee before driving to the eighth,
a par-five which plays to 554 yards. The entire fairway was heavily
surrounded by timber, but the pair noticed that there was a single opening
in the trees offering a carefully-placed drive a chance to short-cut the
hole by playing down the 17th fairway - which was not then and is not now
out of bounds.

"We had to wait for the group ahead of us to clear the fairway, so Chi Chi
and I were just chatting," recalled Hinkle.

"Chi Chi mentioned the short-cut, and I just kind of looked over and said
'Man, there's a fairway over thataway, but where is the green and how far
away is it?'"

Hinkle had the honour. (Had he not, "Chi Chi's Tree" might have entered
the golfing lexicon 24 years ago). He took a one-iron through the gap,
leaving him 220 yards to the green. He knocked it on, and two-putted for
birdie.

So did Chi Chi.

Word quickly trickled back through the field, and by the end of the day a
whole host of golfers had availed themselves of the short-cut, resulting
in an emergency convocation of near-apoplectic USGA officials.

In the dead of night, the Inverness grounds crew was ordered to plant a
25-foot blue spruce to discourage the newly-discovered line of play.

"Hinkle's Tree" remains there today.

"By the time I got to the eighth on Friday, I was four-over and fairly
disappointed in myself for letting the tournament get away," Hinkle
recalled this week. "I looked at the tree as though it had somehow ruined
my Open."

What history did not record is that while Hinkle glumly played his way
down the eighth fairway like everybody else in the second round, Rodriguez
refused to be deterred. Rising to the challenge thrown down by the
tournament officials, Chi Chi defiantly teed his ball up on a pencil and
hit it over the tree anyway.

"I really enjoyed my days as a contender, and I have some great memories,"
said Hinkle. "But the defining moment of my career seems to be that tree.
I was happy with my career in the late 70s and early 80s, but it's the
tree that people associate with my name. I hear about it on a regular
basis - but it's not like I did something wrong."