Lee Trevino: I can't wait to get up each day just to hear what I say

Times

3 days ago

The day I speak to Lee Trevino marks 50 years since he was struck by lightning. Cue the line about how he would deal with being caught in another electrical storm during a round. 'I said I'd hold a one-iron to the sky because even God can't hit a one-iron.'
It is a typically sharp line that masks painful experience and is the entry point to stories of near-death dalliances, Open titles, a king-size bed in his gym, a cast of hustlers and the grim loneliness of the outsider. 'I can't wait to get up in the morning just to hear what I have to say,' Trevino begins. Dallas-born of Mexican heritage, Trevino is 85 and still lives ebulliently in his native city in a house with an enormous swimming pool built by a former Olympic water polo player. He won six majors, including back-to-back Opens in 1971 and 1972, and had another nine top-five finishes on the biggest stages. He might have had a grand slam had he not boycotted the Masters in his prime after a dispute with the Augusta National chairman, Clifford Roberts.
'I tried to cover it up by saying the course did not fit my game, but it was him. He was not a nice person,' Trevino says. The row emanated from playing a practice round with a caddie who did not have a pass for that day. 'Here come the boys from the clubhouse, Cliff Roberts and all. I got in his face and came this far from left-hooking him. I went back but from that day I had a bad taste in my mouth. We never spoke again.' By contrast, as another Open arrives, it is hard to think of a player more in thrall to the event's romance, history and its 'cathedral' at St Andrews. 'Get me a shack there and I'd be happy to live right at the end by the greenkeeper's house,' Trevino says. They can have his ashes too.
The Open fitted Trevino, who never had a golf lesson and had learnt to play by blocking, 'keeping my left hand and club face square'. A perceived weakness thus became a strength. 'The problem in my game was I couldn't hit the ball high, but as far as links courses, oh my God, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It suited me because I hit the ball so low they were putting helmets on the birds.' This affection for the British and Irish encompasses players. Christy O'Connor Sr was 'smooth as silk, a swing like melted butter', Peter Oosterhuis was 'one of the finest', and he is forever embedded in the Tony Jacklin story. When Trevino chipped in on the 17th at Muirfield in 1972 the effect on Jacklin was profound. 'I was never the same,' Jacklin once told me after losing that Open. Trevino's take is typically colourful. 'Tony would never admit this but he didn't have a life. They were running him to death. Get up at 6am, do a clinic, play 18 holes, go to this dinner, that cocktail party. The managers are at home taking 25 per cent and they ran him ragged.
'But God, what a handsome guy! He's still got that sweet swing, boy, but not nearly as fast — he couldn't get a citation in a school zone now.' Another Jacklin story highlights Trevino's maverick mischief. 'Yeah, Wentworth, World Match Play. Tony walks up to me on the 1st tee and says, 'I don't want to talk today, I just want to play golf.' I said, 'I don't want you to talk either, just listen.' Anyway we had 26 birdies and three eagles between us. I beat him on the last hole.' The natural penchant for one-liners fuelled his popularity, but it was also a defence. Anti-Mexican bigotry was an issue, and Trevino would become a loner living on room service when on tour. Eventually, he began drinking and derailed, but you could understand the culture clash when he arrived with his Latino looks and home-made swing.
'I didn't know my dad and my grandfather raised me,' he says. 'We had nothing and I mean nothing. In summer we'd walk five miles to pick cotton and sleep under a tree in a tent. Then my grandad got a job as a gravedigger and we moved to another sharecropper's house, no electricity, no plumbing.
'I dropped out of school at 15, got in trouble and joined the Marine Corps at 16. I was a machine gunner in the Pacific. Got out and went to work on a construction crew building a nine-hole course in Dallas. I welded the irrigation system and started hitting a few balls.' That was the start but he says the Marine Corps had averted a premature end. 'I should be dead or in prison,' he says. 'I had no discipline. When you're 15 and doing what the hell you want, that's not cool. Somewhere along the line someone's going to shoot you or you're gonna shoot somebody.
'I mean, what do you do when you're hungry and broke? You turn to violence. All the kids that I knew, all my friends, they're gone. I'm still looking up. I don't think they're up there but anyway . . .'
After getting out of the Marines, Trevino's life of diversions took him into the golfing underbelly and the hustlers. As a caddie he began playing for a buck, two, $10. 'I never played a tournament so nobody knew.' Enter the tremendously titled Titanic Thompson.
'One time there was a poker game in a little town outside of Dallas. Titanic told this farmer to put 600 melons in his truck and break down opposite the hotel. At two o'clock the poker game breaks and they all come out for a smoke. Titanic says, 'That's a lot of melons over there. We should bet $2,000 apiece and figure out how many there are.' They couldn't resist. So the farmer counted them. There's a lot of gullible people out there. He was one of the greatest hustlers I ever saw.' One day in 1960 Raymond Floyd came to El Paso and Thompson convinced him to play against a lad called Trevino for $1,000 a round. 'Titanic gave me $100 a day plus expenses to play these matches. Anyway, I won the first two matches against Floyd. Lost the second.' When his reputation grew and challenges were harder to find, he took to playing with a soda bottle. 'It was a par-three course. I could back-spin it, hit it 100 yards. I used to shoot two over par and never lost a match with it. I've still got that bottle.' His rise was rocket-fuelled as well as soda-propelled, and he won the 1968 US Open at Oak Hill in only his second year on tour. In the space of 21 days in 1971 he won the US Open, Canadian Open and the Open Championship.
He married Claudia, his third wife, in 1983, and it is clear he loves his life and the game that gave him a passport to fame and fortune. He lets autograph requests pile up until there are about 150 and then sits down at his kitchen table and answers them all. 'I go to the range and it makes me sick to see how a guy is swinging,' Trevino says. 'I straighten him and he says thanks. I say, 'God dang it, the game's not that hard, the ball's not moving.' Everyone goes to an instructor. I can show you everything you need in 30 minutes.' The old ones are often the best, especially in an age of anodyne PR filter, but Trevino is not frozen in the past. Indeed, he has known Scottie Scheffler, the world No1, since he moved to Dallas at the age of six. 'His dad was looking for a club and I was a member of Royal Oaks. The teaching pro there was a good friend of mine, Randy Smith [still Scheffler's coach]. We advocated coming inside on the ball and Scottie did it better than anybody because of his right foot shuffling back. That's why he doesn't pull many. He's closer to the ball. 'He always had something. The summers are scorchers here and the kids would wear shorts, but Scottie would always come out in a pair of slacks. He'd say, 'I'm going to be a pro someday and pros don't wear shorts.' The nicest guy. If he's not another Arnold Palmer I've never seen one. He doesn't play up like Arnie, he's more quiet, but nothing bothers him.'
In April Trevino was glued to the Masters, pulling for Rory McIlroy and thrilled when he won, and will watch every shot next week. 'I don't know of anyone playing who's more of a shot-maker than Rory,' he says. 'That's what you'll need at Portrush.' He can also understand McIlroy's grumpiness when news of his non-conforming driver emerged during the US PGA Championship. 'He's going to the tee, these guys are full of Bud and they're saying, 'Rory, is this driver legal?' You don't need that shit. 'He could have used some humour. I'd have said, 'I'm trying to be No1 and if I can get another five or six illegal clubs in this bag, I'm going to try.' ' With two children, he says he is as happy as June bug and still goes to the course every day. 'I respect it, I worship it. And when I get beaten up I go to the shop and reshaft my clubs.' We rewind to the start and he tells me about being struck by lightning during the 1975 Western Open. 'It helped me more than hurt me,' he says. 'I'd got to the point where I was partying too much. I wasn't doing the right thing and my life was going backwards. Socialising will kill you in the end. In the back of my mind I wanted to prove to people I'm still good. So I started running, weightlifting.' Remarkably, he won another major, the 1984 US PGA, as well as another four at senior level. This fitness regime has continued and he describes his location, a giant house gym where he sleeps in his king-size bed. 'If I get up in the night to go to the bathroom, I'll pick up a barbell. I work out four times a day. I think I'm going to live until 150 but my life is getting dim and you can fall over at any time.'
Intriguingly, he says there is no memorabilia or golfing photographs on show in his house. It is all stuck in the bedroom, stacked floor-to-ceiling, the furniture removed for mothballed memories. 'Yesterday's gone,' he says. Gone, but thankfully, not forgotten.