DATELINE: 4/1/2011

Reversing over 90 years of belief that firm and fast and the ground game are the essential elements of the game of golf, the National Golf Links of Amerca has retained the newly-formed architectural team of Tom Hills and Arthur Fazio for a massive overhaul. “We saw what the late Mike Strantz did at Monterrey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore course in California and decided to do exactly that, but in reverse. We’re going to completely shift the direction of the holes at NGLA; if they run east-west, we’ll have them flowing north-south, and vice-versa.”

Recognizing an over-dependence on the wind’s influence on golf shots, Hills and Fazio also unveiled a tree-planting program for the sandy soil of eastern Long Island. “We think that the Oakmont model is 180 degrees opposite the proper one. Trees are what define a golf course, what frame and, hopefully, choke the fairways. It is our belief that our model, one that copies the successful Augusta Nation movement of the first decade of this century, will lead the way through the second decade of the third millenium.”

Citing a lack of in-bounds water, longstanding member H.S. Finch said that Hills and Fazio expect to dig vast channels from Peconic Bay to form ponds, lakes and even the occasional bathtub. “We suspect that, if Charles Blair MacDonald, the original architect of NGLA, were alive today, he would salute our homage to the Cialis bathtub thematic.”

An expected outcry from the renegade golf architecture underground GCA [whose acronym is thus far undecipherable] was heard, a volley was launched, a salvo was fired. Ranking Member Melhu Morrow suggested that “my ancestor, whose name I forget, supported golf as it was meant to be. What that actually was, currently escapes me. I have no doubt, however, that it may or may not be what messrs. Hazio and Fills are up to.” NGLA member Patricio Mucinex chimed in with ” What might happen to holes …  If you redirected the fairways to …  Let’s imagine that template holes …” and finally “I once completed an entire…”

In a final measure of the underground fraternity’s opinion on the topic, left coast representative Glib Kardashazian hazily was heard to mutter “cloying…reduce…infuse…
perdition…womanizing…halo…pharmaceuticals…shrieking…
histrionics…inflection…tongues” before churning into a dervish of St. Vitus’ dance locomotion. The ultimate effect of his contribution is yet to be assessed.

DATELINE: 4/1/2011