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 he 1979 U. S. Open, for better or worse,
is remembered fondly because of a tree. The Fazios designed the 528
yard 8th-hole to be a classic, three-shot 5-hole. The Inverness Burn
slices across the fairway beyond the landing area. It has five tough
and deep bunkers in the proximity of the green,
Lon Hinkle saw the hole differently. He
discovered during practice that nothing prevented a player from
hitting a tee shot through a narrow opening onto the adjacent 17th
fairway, then lofting a long second shot over trees onto the eighth
green, a shortcut that cut about eighty yards off the intended track.
After several other players following
Hinkle used the same shortcut, the United States Golf Association and
the tournament called an emergency meeting even before the first round
had ended. Concern for the safety of the gallery and the golfers
playing the seventeenth, they considered substantial bushes into play
blocking any access to the seventeenth fairway. Or a tree could be
planted overnight to the left of the tee box to plug the existing gap.
The latter was the alternative chosen.
Wilbert Waters, the Inverness
superintendent, was charged with finding, transporting, and
transplanting an appropriate tree. Work had been completed about 5:30
a.m. with the planting of a 25-foot Blue Hills spruce which stood
looking a bit scraggly and very out of place.
That, however, wasn’t the end for the
eighth hole in the tournament’s spotlight. Irwin made birdie at that
hole. His drive hit a tree and bounced back into the fairway, and his
second shot landed in fairly severe rough. Irwin’s third shot was
skittering across the green, headed for the gallery and possibly
serious trouble, when it clipped the flagstick and stopped some five
feet from the cup. He made birdie. Irwin knew by late afternoon Sunday
that the difference between a birdie and bogey at the eighth hole
during the third round was the cushion needed for his two-shot
victory.
The four holes Fazio put in for the 1979
Open have since been modified and are now, to borrow Nicklaus’s
description, more in character with the rest of the course. The least
affected by the modifications has been the eighth, where a now healthy
robust spruce, the Hinkle Tree, stands sentinel over the tee box, a
constant reminder of the 1979 U.S. Open.
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