Lee Trevino: Cantinflas of the Country Clubs

IF the galleries at last week's British Open learned anything, it was: Don't mess with Supermex, otherwise known as Lee Trevino. Teamed with Britain's own Tony Jacklin in the third round, the gritty little Texan reacted to the crowd's partisan booing with typical machismo: "That only makes me fight harder." Fight he did. Scrambling as he had been doing all week, he started off the final round with four birdies on the first nine holes to take a seemingly insurmountable five-stroke lead. Then, on the treacherous 17th hole on the rolling moonscape of the Royal Birkdale Golf Club, he ran afoul of one of the crater-like traps and took a double bogey. That left him just one stroke ahead of Formosa's surprising Liang Huan Lu.

Now it was time to fight some more. After lofting his 6-iron shot onto the fringe of the 18th green, he putted to within 18 in. of the cup and holed out a birdie four to win with four consecutive sub-par rounds: 69, 70, 69 and 70. In the short span of one month, Lee Buck Trevino--Mexican-American, grade-school dropout, ex-Marine sergeant and all-round hustler--had become the first golfer in history to win the British, Canadian and U.S. Opens in the same year. "Now," he cried, "maybe they'll consider me a good international player!"

There was never much doubt of it back home. True, when Trevino first came out of nowhere to win his first U.S. Open in 1968, many dismissed him as a one-shot upstart. Who, after all, had ever heard of a Chicano champion--a Chicano, moreover, who had learned the game by gambling with easy marks on a Texas pitch-and-putt course? Who could believe a pro golf titlist who looked like a hacker and talked like a hustler?

Yet in the seasons since, swaggering down the fairways, wearing gaudy red socks and a grin as wide as the Rio Grande, Trevino has captured the fancy of the fans--and the purses of the Professional Golfers' Association. Since that first U.S. Open triumph, he has won more money ($597,461) and finished among the top ten in more tournaments (79) than any other golfer on the tour. With official P.G.A. earnings of $196,000 so far this season--the $13,200 he won in the British Open is not included in P.G.A. money rankings--he is a cinch to break Billy Casper's 1968 record of $205,000. Trevino plans to play in at least eight to ten more tournaments this year, which means that he can conceivably earn more than $300,000 in prize money. "You can call me a Spaniard now," he says, "because who ever heard of a rich Mexican?"

Smacking and Wisecracking

It will not be easy to win any or all of the upcoming tournaments. Golfdom's perennial Big Four--Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Billy Casper--are still potent, and the sport has a host of other aggressive young stars (see box) who in any given week can run off with the big money. Clearly, though, no other golfer is about to match Trevino's record in 1971. At 31, he is in his prime--and is working through the hottest streak of his career. In addition to finishing among the top five money winners in nine of his last 11 tournaments, he is leading the pack in the race for the Vardon Trophy, which goes to the pro golfer who averages the fewest strokes per round.

Still another test was Trevino's performance last month in the 1971 U.S. Open at the Merion Golf Club on Philadelphia's Main Line. Three strokes off the pace in the first round, Trevino then rallied to tie Jack Nicklaus after 72 holes. At the start of their 18-hole playoff, Trevino playfully tossed a rubber snake at his startled opponent. Then --smacking gum and wisecracking with the crowd--he jauntily outshot the Golden Bear by three strokes to win the Open for the second time. As Supermex put it when he accepted the trophy: "I think it was Walter Hagen who said, 'Any man can win one Open, but it takes a great player to win two.' "

Great? That Trevino undoubtedly is. The greatest? Many of the touring pros would vote for Nicklaus, who can outdrive Trevino by 30 yds. and win any tournament when he puts his total game together. Most colorful? Most popular? From the public, there is no argument. That became dramatically apparent at the recent Canadian Open in Montreal. As Arnold Palmer stepped up to the tenth tee, an official on the adjacent first tee announced: "Now on the tee, the U.S. Open champion, Senor Lee Trevino!" Just like that, several hundred spectators deserted Arnie's Army, for years pro golf's largest entourage, to join the happy, noisy throng called Lee's Fleas.

Larger than Life

Trevino rewarded his fans with a scrambling finish reminiscent of the Palmer of old. Six strokes off the pace after the first round, Lee pitched in a 105-yd. sand wedge for an eagle and holed a 35-ft. birdie putt on the final day of play to tie 47-year-old Art Wall for first place. Then, on the first hole of the sudden-death playoff, he coolly knocked in a snaking 18-ft. birdie to win the $30,000 first prize.

Golf has always had its share of distinctive, larger-than-life personalities: Terrible Tommy Bolt, the late Champagne Tony Lema, Daiquiri Doug Sanders. None of them, though, ever had Trevino's mix of fun and finesse--or his earthy, egalitarian appeal. A country-club Cantinflas, he will stick his tongue out at an errant shot, coax in a putt with a burlesque-queen bump or break into an impromptu toreador waltz with an attacking bee. Lee's Fleas delight in his wisecracks (Flea: "Nice shot!" Lee: "What did you expect from the U.S. Open champion--ground balls?"). They love his catch phrases ("Black is beautiful, but brown is cute") and his apologies for cussing ("Excuse me, lady, I thought you was a tree"). Says 1969 Masters Champion George Archer: "The tour is like a big circus that pulls into town once a year, and Lee is the ringmaster and clown rolled into one."

In a game that demands the concentration of a watchmaker, Trevino confesses that "the only time I stop yakking is when I'm asleep." A methodical player like Nicklaus will go an entire round without uttering a word. Lee the Lip chatters before, after and sometimes even during a shot. "You know," he will say as he tees up, "I've got to be the only Mexican"--thwack goes his drive down the fairway--"who's never been in a detention home. I just never got caught." On another hole, he will announce: "Five years ago, I was teeing up on dirt. Now I've got tees" --thwack--"with my name on 'em." Orville Moody, one of Trevino's close friends on the tour, recalls how Lee shocked an unsuspecting gallery in Singapore when they were teamed in the 1969 World Cup matches. As Lee lined up a 20-ft. putt, the customary funereal hush fell over the crowd. Slowly, deliberately, he drew back his putter and then suddenly said, "With a million-dollar swing like mine"--tap--"I can't miss." He didn't.

Trevino's high jinks tend to obscure the excellence of his somewhat unorthodox style. Pointing his feet to the left and swinging to the right, he has a flat chopping stroke that sends his drives off the tee like sharp singles to center field. Dead center field, that is. No power hitter, he makes up in accuracy what he lacks in distance. "The only time Lee's off the fairway," says Archer, "is when he's answering the phone." As for his short game, few if any of the pros surpass his skill at, as he puts it, "dropping the ball on the Governor's lawn." Once there, he putts like a pool shark. "My swing's not much," he says, "but it's good for a short fat man." Then, smiling slyly, he adds, "Say, it's worked for a while, hasn't it?"

Part Showman, Part Salesman

Shambling along a fairway, the short fat man often looks more like one of the galleryites--which explains in part why he has become the duffers' delight. "I've got a lot of people rooting for me," says Trevino, "because there's more poor people than rich people. You look at my galleries. You'll see tattoos. Plain dresses. 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. To them, I am someone who worked hard, kept at it and made it. Sure, I go out of my way to talk to them. They're my people."

Trevino's people are taking to the fairways in record numbers. Once the pastime of the privileged, golf is played today by 12 million Americans on more than 10,000 courses. When the pros arrive in town, duffers stand ten deep to see how Casper cocks his elbow on the backswing or Player plants his feet for an uphill lie. Since an average of 10 million viewers watch the weekend tournaments on TV, today's pro golfer must be part showman and part salesman for one of the fastest-growing sports in the U.S. No one is more aware of that fact than Lee Trevino: "You won't catch me criticizing a gallery. I don't care if they scream their heads off, because they pay my way out here."

Not all the pros appreciate the way Trevino courts the crowds. "All the world loves a loudmouth," says one image-conscious veteran. "But sometimes Lee can be so coarse"--a reference to Trevino's predilection for jokes about "booze and broads." Most players agree, however, that he may be one of the best things to happen to golf since the steel-shafted club. "He sure brings the people in," says Frank Beard. After one tournament. Beard recalls, he saw Trevino "packing up his car, wearing his cowboy hat and his cowboy boots. I couldn't help noticing that he had more people watching him load his car than I'd had watching me shoot my 66."

Beard, a stern-faced tactician on the course, does not think that the roles of comedian and champion are compatible. "Trevino is a tremendous golfer," he says, "but nobody can tell me that a player can keep up a constant conversation with the gallery and talk to himself on the backswing and still produce his best golf." Trevino disagrees. "I'm out there to have some fun and win some money." That he does both with such stylish ease is tribute to his philosophy of the game: "Stay loose." A friend explains: "Lee's secret is that when he has to, he can approach a difficult shot laughing, turn on the concentration, hit the ball and then go off laughing again. It may not look like he's concentrating, but he is."

Trevino's no-sweat image belies his devotion to the game. On his first day at the 1968 Masters, he played 36 practice holes, followed that with nine holes on a pitch-and-putt course and then, after a shower, ended at midnight on a par-three course, going another nine holes in sports coat and alligator shoes. Prior to last year's British Open, he spent eight full days hitting 600 to 700 practice shots a day learning how to hook the smaller English ball. "I play every day," he says. "Even if I'm taking some time off, I'm out there beating balls. You got to hit the ball in this game until your hands bleed."

Trevino takes little time off; this season he is playing in more tournaments than any other top pro. Nicklaus, for one, thinks that could be harmful to Lee's game. "Right now," he says, "Lee's like a kid a few years out of college--it's go, go, go. But in a couple of years, he'll have to learn to pace himself or he'll burn himself out." Trevino pays no heed. "You have to remember," he says, "that I'm only playing tour golf for four years. I have a lot of ground to make up. I'll play 'em all, whether it's the Canadian Bacon Open or the Screen Door Open. If the money's there, I'll play on a gravel road."

Too Poor to Care

Trevino's desire to buy a big hunk of life for me and my kids" is a drive born of deprivation. He does not know who his father was and has never tried to find out. "Rich people like to talk about their backgrounds, their ancestors and where they come from," he explains. "We were too poor to care. We were too busy existing." He was raised in the rural outskirts of Dallas by his mother Juanita and his maternal grandfather Joe Trevino, an immigrant gravedigger. Their four-room frame house --located "about two miles over in the country"--had neither electricity nor running water. Lee had to improvise his boyhood games. Basketball was played with a tennis ball. A taped beer can served as a football.

The golf balls, though, were for real. The Trevino house stood in a hayfield next to the seventh fairway of the Glen Lakes Country Club. In between was a fence, and little Lee was soon turning a tidy profit on that happy coincidence --collecting balls that sailed over the fence and selling them back to club members. Expanding his business, he welded two rake handles together, fashioned a chicken-wire scoop on one end, and went fishing for more strays in the water hazards. "I cleared maybe $10 a day," he recalls. When he was six, he found a discarded wooden-shafted No. 5 iron, sawed it down to size and began hitting horse apples. Bored with make-believe, he eventually "made me a two-hole course in the pasture, and when they cut the hay in summer I had me the plushest course you ever saw."

Trevino quit school after the seventh grade to work for the Glen Lakes greenkeeper. He caddied on the side, played a few holes at dusk, but took no serious interest in the game. That did not develop until after he joined the Marines at 17 and was shipped to Japan as a machine gunner. He picked up a tattoo, caroused around the bars, and got into fights with sailors. "I loved the Marines," he says. "I never knew anybody when I was a kid, and there I was around a bunch of guys my own age. Hell, I volunteered for everything --night patrols, you name it. It was like camping out to me." Things got even better when he spied a bulletin-board notice announcing tryouts for the 3rd Marine Division golf team. "Shucks," he told himself, "I know a little about that game." Qualifying for the team with a round of 66, he learned a lot more over the next two years playing in tournaments in Japan, Formosa and the Philippines.

Wallets Waiting

When Lee returned home in 1961, he was ready for a little action. He found it at Dallas' Tenison municipal golf course, where there were plenty of wallets waiting to be tapped. His challenge was hard to resist: he would play with only one club, give an opponent his handicap, and winner take all. Trevino claims that he and his trusty No. 3 iron never lost. When things were slow, he would take on all comers on an obstacle course that began on the first tee and then angled across a railroad crossing, down a gravel road and through a tunnel before ending back on the course. Business was so good (he was averaging $200 a week hustling) that he took an apartment across the street from the course so he could get an earlier start.

While working evenings at Hardy's Pitch-N-Putt, Trevino would attract a crowd by playing with a quart-size Dr Pepper bottle wrapped in adhesive tape. If the stakes were right, he would match his bottle against any challenger's clubs. Rarely shooting above a 30 on the nine-hole course, he says, "I never lost a bet using that bottle." He did lose a few suckers. "On the driving range once," recalls his longtime friend Arnold Salinas, "a guy bet Lee he couldn't hit the 100-yd. sign. Lee looked at him and said, 'Which zero do you want me to hit?' The guy backed down."

In 1964, Lee postponed marrying his second wife Claudia, a pert blonde he affectionately refers to as "Clyde," so that he could enter a pro-am tournament in Fort Worth. On the first hole, he bounced in an eagle, then birdied the second, third, fourth, fifth, eighth and ninth holes to turn the first nine in 29. He finished with an incredible 61, eleven strokes under par. Recalls Claudia: "That was the first time I'd ever seen anybody play golf. You know, I thought that was the way you were supposed to play." So she felt consolations were in order. "Don't worry, honey," she said, "one day you'll birdie all 18 holes."

Down the River Beds

Trevino quit his job at Hardy's in 1965 and decided to go to the Panama Open with an aspiring Dallas sponsor. Unfortunately, neither Lee nor his backer could afford the plane fare, so the two men spent 71 days driving to Panama, sleeping in the car, grinding up horse trails and bouncing down boulder-strewn river beds. Trevino placed fifth in the tourney, won $716.16, and flew back to Dallas. For the rest of that year, he struggled along, giving lessons and entering small pro-am tournaments around the state. As a teacher, he was known to get his point across with cutting humor. "If I were you," he told one student, "I'd go out and practice all day every day for two whole weeks. Hit buckets of balls. Work on all your shots. And then I'd quit. Sell my clubs and quit." Even as a part-time pro, he so dominated the local competition that when he registered for one tournament, the officials handed him the first-place money before he even teed off.

Word of Trevino's feats soon reached Martin Lettunich, a wealthy cotton farmer who had been steadily losing bets to a hot local golfer at the Horizon City Country Club in El Paso. Seeking revenge, Lettunich telephoned Trevino in Dallas and offered to pay his expenses if he would come to El Paso and play the home-town star in a "sociable game." Trevino. who was broke as usual, agreed to come, instantly. "I shot a 65 and 67 and beat him like a tom-tom. I turned him every way but loose." That earned Trevino $300 and the chance to become a teaching pro at Horizon City. The salary--$30 a week--did not interest him, but the prospect of more "sociable games" and the opportunity to hone his game did. He accepted.

Trevino and his wife moved into a small trailer on a farm four miles from the course in 1966. "Lee used to jog to work to keep his legs in shape," recalls Don Whittington, then a co-owner of Horizon City. "Even in those days, he had very definite ambitions to become a great golfer." Trevino played the gusty desert course with Spartan regularity. When winds of up to 60 m.p.h. kicked up the sand, he donned scuba-diver goggles and kept swinging. Impressed by his determination, Whittington and his partner paid Trevino's plane fare to the 1966 U.S. Open in San Francisco. Playing with an unmatched bag of clubs ("I must have had seven different brands"), he finished 54th and was so discouraged that he refused to enter the 1967 Open. Claudia ("I'd be in jail now if it weren't for her," he says) sent in his registration anyway and shoved him off to Odessa, Texas, for the qualifying rounds. He shot a 69-67 to become the lowest local qualifier in the nation.

When Trevino arrived for the Open at the Baltusrol Country Club in Springfield, N.J., his wardrobe was sparse. "I had to walk 500 yds. down the road to a Chinese joint in order to eat because the dining room at my motel insisted on a tie and jacket. I ate so much Chinese food I was slant-eyed." It apparently agreed with him. He finished fifth, won $6,000 and was later named the Rookie of the Year. Lee Buck Trevino was on his way.

Since joining the tour, Lee has won nine P.G.A. tournaments and currently ranks No. 10 among golf's alltime money winners. (Palmer leads, with $1,364,898.) Besieged by sponsors waiting to have their wallets tapped, he also has a host of lucrative endorsement deals with, among others, Blue Bell, Inc. (sportswear), Abbott Laboratories (golf equipment), Stylist Shoe Co., Downtowner Motor Inns, Chrysler's Dodge Division, and, of course, the Dr Pepper Co. In addition, Lee Trevino Enterprises Inc. is readying a TV series called Golf Celebrity and a $1.5 million luxury apartment complex in El Paso called Casa Trevino.

Why Go to Bed?

Will success spoil Lee Trevino? Never, he says, confident that his trying times are behind him. Thanks to the nitty-gritty experience of his hustling days, he says the pressure of competition never bothers him. "A $5 bet and only $2 in your pocket--that's pressure." What did get to him, though, was all the promoting and partying. Easily lured out for a night of carousing with friendly Fleas, Trevino all too often would live up to his happy philosophy: "I love livin'. Why go to bed? I like to party because I missed a lot of nights when I couldn't afford parties. I get my five hours' sleep." Asked what the toughest feature of the Greater New Orleans Open course was, he answered: "Bourbon Street." After tying for first place in the National Airlines Open in Miami last year, he stayed up half the night drinking beer and betting on jai alai. Next day, teeing up for his play-off with Bob Menne, he said: "Shoot, I was just coming in this morning when he was getting up. Man, a guy can get loo much rest." The psych worked. On the second hole, Menne lipped out a 2-ft. putt for a bogey, and Trevino was $40,000 richer.

After his Miami victory, however, Trevino did not win another tournament for 13 months. He abruptly dropped out of the Philadelphia Classic last year and fled with his wife to a mountain cabin in New Mexico for a ten-day rest. After two days, Claudia saw Lee out in the woods hitting pine cones with a broomstick and realized that it was time to get back. Two weeks later, following a dizzying round of banquets and public appearances, Lee failed to show up for the first round of the Westchester Classic and was disqualified. After explaining that he had overslept (he had gone to bed at 4 a.m.), he flew off to Acapulco for another try at rest and recuperation.

The gay caballero was, by his own admission, "tired, mentally tired." Troubled by business problems, a slightly strained relationship with Claudia, and the lingering illness of his mother, he started out the 1971 season by dropping out of three tournaments. During an exhibition match in Palm Beach five months ago Nicklaus took him aside in the locker room and told him: "I hope you never find out how well you can play. If you do, it will be trouble for all of us." Says Trevino: "That word of encouragement changed my life. It stopped me from being the nervous character I was. I realized that I could reach the peak." He cut back on his outside commitments, and tempered his night-owl habits. Last April, Lee won the Tallahassee Open and started off on his fiery streak.

No Complaints

Now that he can afford steak instead of his old diet of Texas hash and Kool-Aid, he has a problem keeping in shape ("Five feet seven and a half is a little short for 185 Ibs."). His avowed goal is "to win a million bucks. After that, I might slow down a little and go see what my kids look like. The way I'm spending money, I have to win a million." Although he is determined that "the next generation with my name won't have to be laborers," he confesses that "money is just pieces of paper to me." Knowing that, Claudia handles the family finances. "We can go out to shop for a pair of socks," she says, "and he'll spend $500." An eager gambler, Trevino has been known to blow a wad in a poker game, hit his wife for some money ("Honey, give me a check for a couple of hundred"), and hustle across the border to bet the greyhounds at the Juarez dog track.

Last year, when a deal involving the Horizon City housing development in which he was living soured, Trevino felt compelled to sell his prized five-bedroom adobe villa with its putting green and garden (okra, jalapeno chili, black-eyed peas) out back. Temporarily, Lee, Claudia, Daughter Lesley, 6, Son Tony, 2, are making do in an El Paso apartment. But, says Trevino, "I don't complain, about anything. The game has been too good to me. You see, nobody loves to play golf more than I do. Besides, what would I be without the tour? A lot of young pros are college graduates and could make money doing something else. I can't. I couldn't make a living doing anything else, except maybe pumping gas somewhere. For me, golf is it, baby.

"A lot of guys on the tour," he goes on, "gripe about the travel and the food and losing their laundry. Well, no matter how bad the food may be, I've eaten worse. And I couldn't care less about the laundry because I can remember when I only had one shirt." Even today, Trevino shudders at the thought of turning out in one of the snazzy ensembles favored by the other pros. "Wouldn't that be somethin'? Lee Trevino from El Paso stepping out on the course in a $150 pair of shoes, a $50 alpaca sweater and a $40 pair of trousers. You give me a pair of $8.95 pants, a $4 shirt and a pair of sneakers and I'm ready to tee up."

And off he goes, teeing up and yakking, yakking, yakking. "You only go around once in life"--thwack--"and you gotta smell the roses as you go by."

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