Lee Trevino (born 1939) was an innovator in one of the most traditional of sports: professional golf. Born into poverty, he mastered the sport with a homemade club and an unconventional golfing swing, rising in the ranks to become one of the top golfers of his generation.
Mexican American golfer Lee Trevino proved that some of the best golfers are self-taught. After joining the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) tour in 1969, Trevino won many major tournaments, including the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA championship title. Trevino's happy-go-lucky, offbeat persona endeared him to many fans. An optimistic, resourceful man, Trevino grew up in poverty and did not begin competing as a professional until age 27.
Humble Roots
Lee Buck Trevino was born in Dallas, Texas, on December 1, 1939, to parents Joseph and Juanita Trevino. He had two sisters and his father left the family at an early age. They lived in four rooms with no running water and no electricity. But with Juanita's pay from her work as a domestic and the help of her father-in-law, Joe Trevino, a grave-digger, the family got by. The house stood in a field and backed up to the fairway of a local Dallas golf course, the Glen Lakes Country Club, and young Lee was fascinated with the world of rolling, finely manicured lawns, spotless putting greens and dapperly clad golfers he saw walking by each day.
Although he was often physically beaten by his grandfather, Trevino was a streetwise kid with an infectious smile and a ready wit who did not resent his family's poverty. Instead, he developed the resourcefulness, drive, and creativity that would characterize his career as a golfer. Using a discarded club cut down to a six-year-old's size, he began developing a golf swing by mimicking what he saw while watching other golfers at a distance. At night he would sneak over the fence and play on the empty course. At age 14 he went to work at Hardy's Driving Range, where he was able to practice his swing with real golf equipment.
Leaving school after seventh grade, Trevino lied about his age and joined the U.S. Marines at 17, serving in Asia from 1956 to 1960 as a machine gunnery sergeant. While in the service, he played golf with the Third Marine Division tournaments in Japan and the Philippines, where he earned a handicap of only four.
Leaving the Marines when his four years were up, he returned to Texas and to Hardy's Pitch-n-Putt, a driving range and par-3 course where he became assistant golf pro. He remained there until 1964, using his off hours to modify his highly original golf swing, and attended the PGA golf school, a requirement for admission to the tour.
Playing golf costs money, even when you work at a course, and the resourceful Trevino soon became known asa hustler, betting golfers that he could defeat them using a soft-drink bottle rather than a regulation golf club. Trevino later cited his hustling as good training for staying calm during professional competitions. As he told Time magazine, "A $5 bet and only $2 in your pocket—that's pressure."
A Self-Taught Swing
Some have described Trevino's golf swing as resembling a baseball batter's. In their book The Masters of Golf: Learning from Their Methods, authors Dick Aultman and Ken Bowden describe his style as "five wrongs" that combine to make "an immaculate right." His stance was open, his grip firm, his shoulders pointing to the left of the point he was aiming for. Standing low over the ball, Trevino reached the top of his swing, his left wrist pushed outward, then he dragged the club down flat to the left. While he battled with a left hook early in his career, he worked for months to counteract it and eventually trained himself to cut the ball to the right.
As his swing improved in accuracy, so did Trevino's reputation among Texas golfers, and with the help of patron Bill Gray, he entered several regional tournaments, including the Texas Open in 1965 and 1966 and the New Mexico Open in 1966. Working as an assistant pro at El Paso's Horizon Hills Country Club, Trevino was earning enough money to support his growing family. He joined the professional tour in 1966 and did well until a discouraging 54th-place finish in the U.S. Open dampened the 26-year-old golfer's aspirations.
Trevino rebounded and returned to the U.S. Open to finish in fifth place in 1967. A total unknown on the national golf circuit, Trevino captured attention with his casual, sunny disposition and his tendency to be unusually talkative in a game that frequently demanded silence.
Leaving his position at Horizon Hills, Trevino officially joined the PGA tour in 1968. Scoring in the 60s in all four rounds at Oak Hill, he tied a record with a score of 275 and beat Jack Nicklaus and Bert Yancey in a touch-and-go finish. He was the first golfer to score under par in all four rounds of the U.S. Open. He earned the PGA Rookie of the Year award and at season's end had official winnings of $125,675 plus endorsements.
With wins at the Amana, Hawaiian and Tucson opens between 1968 and 1969, Trevino continued his winning streak, and in 1969 he gained his first World Cup win. However, 1970 was a different story: over 13 months he entered many tournaments but left without a win.
Trevino rebounded in the spring of 1971. In a playoff round against Nicklaus during the 1971 U.S. Open in Merion, Pennsylvania, Trevino bested him 68-71. That year the PGA named Trevino Player of the Year, one of many awards he would receive for winning the U.S. Open for the second time in four years. Chalking up wins in the British Open and the Canadian Open as well, Trevino became the first to win all three tournaments in a single year; in fact, he won them all in just over three weeks. His second World Cup win was just icing on the cake.
During the early 1970s Trevino was unstoppable, with his second win at the British Open in 1972, and additional victories at the Canadian Open in 1977 and 1979, the Hartford Open in 1972, the Mexican Open in 1973 and 1975, at Colonial National in 1976 and 1978. He won the 1974 World Series of Golf and PGA championships, keeping his name in the news around the world. As a team captain several times throughout the decade and into the mid-1980s, he also gained press for participating in the U.S. Ryder Cup.
Nature Took Aim
By the mid-1970s it seemed as though nothing could stop Trevino, until Mother Nature intervened to slow him down a bit. While out on a golf course in 1975, he was struck by a bolt of lightning, and although he lived to tell—and in typical Trevino fashion, joke—about it, the accident did affect his game. While victories still came Trevino's way, they did not come as easily, and the golfer realized that the problem lay in the way a resulting back problem had altered his golf swing. Adjusting his stance, he aimed less to the right, breaking the unwritten "rules" governing the perfect swing but achieving a championship-winning result.
Trevino won his second PGA championship in 1984, and by the mid-1980s he was one of only three golfers to earn more than three million dollars in tournament prize money. He would laugh about his wealth for years to come, quipping to reporters the oft-quoted comment: "You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work."
One of Golf's Greatest
Trevino's golfing career was marked by both casual humor and extreme consistency, and he gained a reputation for his proficient swing. On five separate occasions—1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, and 1980—he won the Vardon Trophy, named for British golfer Harry Vardon and awarded each year since 1937 to the touring professional with the lowest stroke average in 60 or more PGA tournament rounds.
Despite his success as a world-class golfer during the 1970s and 1980s, many in the press viewed the down-to-earth Texan as more a showman than a professional athlete. His demeanor was perhaps more unusual in golf than it would be in other sports, because golf had a lengthy history as a sport exclusive to the wealthy and socially refined. However, Trevino reflected a trend that was already under way of golf becoming increasingly popular among younger Americans with time on their hands. "I represent the guy who goes to the driving range, the municipal player, the truck driver, the union man, the guy who grinds it out," he explained to Time.
When watching Trevino play, it was not unusual to see him stick his tongue out at a uncooperative golf ball, don a sombrero, or clown around with his caddy, and such antics quickly gained him a group of fans the press dubbed "Lee's Fleas." Off the green, he also developed a reputation for gambling and carousing with friends into the wee hours. "Why go to bed?," he once told a Time interviewer. "I like to party because I missed lots of nights when I couldn't afford parties." Because of his quick wit and likeable personality, Trevino was an easy choice when NBC Sports went looking for a golf commentator in 1983.
Seniors Tourney
In 1990 52-year-old Trevino joined the Senior PGA tour and surprised no one when he continued the successful run of his PGA days. During his first year he earned more prize money than the money leader of the regular tour and was both Senior Rookie of the Year and Senior Player of the Year.
Continuing to perform well into the mid-1990s, Trevino became PGA Seniors champion in 1994, but a neck injury forced him to start relaxing a bit. Playing a minimum of 20 tournaments a year, he was in the top ten only three times in 2000, and in 2003 was beaten by an amateur in a People vs. the Pros match in Las Vegas. In 2004 on the Champions Tour, Trevino marked his 16th season, 38 seasons total counting back from 1967 when he first joined the PGA Tour. With age taking its toll, he still worked on his swing, but as he told Bill Fields in Golf World, "Usually I go play now and I can tell you how many birds I saw, not how many greens I missed. But it's still a lot of fun."
Trevino married three times and fathered six children. Son Richard Lee, from his first marriage, became a professional golfer. Lesley Ann, Tony Lee, and Troy Liana were from his second marriage to Claudia Lee Fenley, which ended in divorce in early 1983. Trevino wed Claudia Bove, whom he met at the Greater Hartford Open, in December 1983; the couple had two children, Olivia and Daniel.
Part of his role as a golf pro was to help teach others, and Trevino wrote several books about his chosen sport, among them 1971's I Can Help Your Game and Groove Your Golf Swing My Way, published in 1976. His autobiography, They Call Me Super Mex, was published by Random House in 1983. He was also host of the syndicated television program Golf for Swingers and remained with NBC as a commentator into the 1990s. Beginning in 1998 golf enthusiasts could play a nine-hole course of his design located at Mexico's El Cid Resort.
Community-minded, Trevino traditionally donated a portion of his winnings to charities. He also served as National Christmas Seal Sports Ambassador in 1971 and was a member of the President's Conference on Physical Fitness and Sports and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society sports committee. Although he lived for several years in Florida at the height of his career, Trevino eventually returned to his Texas roots. He and his family owned a large home only three miles from where the humble, four-room Trevino homestead of his boyhood once stood.
Books
Aultman, Dick, and Ken Bowden, The Masters of Golf: Learning from Their Methods, Galahad Books, 1994.
Dictionary of Hispanic Biography, Gale, 1996.
Jackson, Robert M., Supermex: The Lee Trevino Story, Hill & Wang, 1973.
Trevino, Lee, with Oscar Fraley, I Can Help Your Game, Fawcett, 1971.
Trevino, Lee, with Sam Blair, They Call Me Super Mex, Random House, 1983.
—The Snake in the Sandtrap, and Other Misadventures on the Golf Tour, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985.
Periodicals
Golf World, January 19, 2001; July 12, 2002.
Sports Illustrated, December 31, 1971; March 31, 1980; December 4, 2000; December 10, 2001.
Time, July 19, 1971.
Online
"Golf Legend Talks about Favorite Course, Best Shot and His 50-Year-Old Putter," http://golf.about.com/cs/legendsofgolf/a/trevinoqanda.htm (June 2, 2004).
