The stories about his legendary money matches perhaps have been embellished through the years, but it’s well documented Lee Trevino used to play for money he didn’t have.
"Pressure is playing for $10,” Trevino likes to say, "when you don’t have a dime in your pocket.”
He was a hustler long before he became a professional and won 29 PGA Tour events and later 29 Champions Tour events, capturing two U.S. Opens, two British Opens, two PGA Championships and five Champions majors. He also was inducted in the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1981. But don’t use the "h” word around him.
"I wasn’t a hustler,” Trevino insisted last Tuesday during the Toshiba Classic’s annual Champions breakfast at the Newport Beach Marriott, where he was the keynote speaker. "A hustler is a guy who will lie about his handicap. I didn’t have a handicap, so I didn’t lie about mine.”
So he always played to a zero, or scratch, and he said it didn’t matter when 7 handicaps said on the tee they were "about a 12.”
"Didn’t save ’em,” Trevino said, laughing. "Didn’t save ’em.”
When cash was on the line, Trevino usually prevailed.
After four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Trevino returned to Dallas and ran the driving range at a Hardy’s Pitch-n-Putt, a nine-hole course where he hit thousands of balls to hone his short game.
"Make a long story short, I practiced for four years on the par-3 course,” Trevino said. "Longest hole was 120 yards, shortest hole was 55 yards, and it was lit for night play. That’s why my wedge game was so good. Bump and run, all these crazy, silly shots … I could do all this stuff with any club. Got so good with one club — whether it was a wedge or 9-iron or putter — that I couldn’t find any games. Nobody would bet me.”
So Trevino improvised, to try to get some action, and it worked. He taped the neck of a 32-ounce Dr. Pepper bottle — the glass was very thick in those days — and used the bottle as his only golf club.
His opponent could use real golf clubs, but Trevino would "throw the ball up and hit it like you would with a baseball bat.” (Remember Roy McAvoy playing golf with garden tools in the movie "Tin Cup”? Same concept.)
Trevino said he also putted between his legs, "croquet style,” with the bottom of the bottle. He won all ties, which essentially gave him a half-stroke per hole.
"Played three or four years with this bottle and never lost a match with it,” he said proudly. "Used to practice for hours with this thing. I could hit it high or low. I probably won about . . .”
He paused, asking if there were any Internal Revenue Service agents in the ballroom audience.
"I won a little bit,” he said, smirking.
Trevino and his unorthodox homemade swing were so effective, word spread through the Southwest, and his acquaintances began arranging money matches. His pals would bet on him, and he would take on all comers.
In 1965, one patron gave him $300 and a plane ticket to El Paso to play three matches against a renowned hustler named Fred Hawkins.
"I beat him twice, and he didn’t show up for the third match,” Trevino said.
He was such a hit in El Paso, he was persuaded to move there for a job as an assistant pro at Horizon Hills Country Club, where he said he "did a little bit of everything,” including opening the club at 5 a.m. and serving as a locker room attendant and cart boy at times.
And, of course, playing in money matches. One day PGA Tour star Raymond Floyd came out to play three money matches against him. So when Floyd pulled up in a white Cadillac, Trevino unloaded the car, lugged Floyd’s huge tour bag to the locker room, unpacked it, cleaned Ray’s shoes — and then went out and beat him.
"I shot 65; he shot 66 or 67,” Trevino said. "He wanted to play an emergency nine. I said, ‘Sorry, Mr. Floyd, I can’t play any more. I have to put up the carts.’
"He came back the next day and I beat him a second again. Third day, he beat me, one-up, when he eagled the last hole and I lipped out to tie. That’s when he said, ‘That’s enough, boys, I got easier games than this on tour."’
It wasn’t long before Trevino joined Floyd on the PGA Tour. He won tour Rookie of the Year honors in 1967, won the U.S. Open at Oak Hill in 1968 . . . and, as the late, great Paul Harvey would say, you know the rest of the story.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
