“People may not remember the name Lon Hinkle, but they know the Hinkle Tree."

Nice job by Jim Achenbach to not only review the wild and wacky story behind the Lon Hinkle tree at Inverness and the '79 Open, but also to track down Hinkle who has been away from playing the game but has discovered an itch to tee it up again.

Today, Hinkle is resigned to his fate. “People may not remember the name Lon Hinkle,” he says, “but they know the Hinkle Tree. I don’t really want to be remembered because of a tree, but I guess it could be worse.”

Hinkle lives in Bigfork, Mont., and teaches golf at nearby Eagle Bend Golf Club. He hopes to join the Jim McLean Golf School in La Quinta, Calif., for the winter season.

Always a big hitter, Hinkle won the World Long Drive Championship in 1981. Does he still hit it long?

“I still give it a ride,” he says. “I was playing with (talk show host) Maury Povich the other day. We were on a 380-yard hole, and I hit my drive pretty good.

“I said to Maury, ‘Yeah, I hit it a little bit in the neck, but it’ll do.’ I ended up 43 steps from the hole.”

The memories, if not the distance, tend to fade away. Lon Hinkle has become a name associated mostly with a tree.

When Hinkle tried recently to obtain a complimentary set of clubs from a major manufacturer, he was turned down. He even offered to publicize the brand, but it didn’t make any difference.

So he went to a golf shop and bought a set. “I’ve got the bug again,” he said. “I really want to be deeply involved in golf.”

Update on 2011-07-27 15:59 by Geoff

**David Fay's Golf Digest interview from 2002 features his place in the Hinkle tree story.

Your first U.S. Open working for the USGA involved a famous incident with the planting of the Hinkle Tree at Inverness [near the eighth tee after the first round in 1979], to prevent Lon Hinkle and others from using an adjacent fairway. What was your involvement?

I had to buy it. No, I take that back. I had to pay for it.
How much?

A hundred and twenty dollars. Still have the receipt somewhere. Picture this: It's 5 a.m. on Friday morning, and Bob Yoder [greens chairman] from Inverness walks in with a big smile, and he drops the receipt down on my desk for a pretty mangy looking black-hill spruce. I thought it was a joke -- some kind of rookie hazing thing.