Spirit of the Game: Lee Trevino

Spirit of the Game: Lee Trevino

August 19, 2021

All golfers are self-made, but the man who made the most out of what he started with has to be Lee Trevino.

Trevino rose from a three-room shack with no plumbing in east Dallas to become arguably the most consistent shotmaker the game has ever seen. Through an agile mind, a tremendous work ethic and a sense of moment that belongs to the natural performer, Trevino carved a way to the top that is unlike any other in golf history.

Starting as a caddy and coming up through the ranks of driving ranges, military golf and hustling, Trevino first burst into big-time professional golf full blown. He was a squat 5-foot-7, 180-pound ball of fire whose rapid wit made players and galleries laugh, but whose game commanded their respect

Image shows Lee Trevino with the U.S. Open trophy at the 1968 U.S. Open championship. (Copyright Unknown/Courtesy USGA Museum)

Trevino was born on Dec. 1, 1939, in Garland, Texas. Reared by his mother and maternal grandfather, a gravedigger, he never knew his father. As a boy, Trevino was in the cotton fields working by the time he was five. “I thought hard work was just how life was,” he said. His family’s home was 100 yards from the seventh fairway of the Dallas Athletic Club, and by the time Trevino was eight, he was caddying. “That’s where I learned my killer instinct, playing games with the caddies and betting everything I had earned that day,” he wrote. He quit school in eighth grade to work at a driving range, where he would hit hundreds of balls a day.

Regarded as one of the greatest players in professional golf history, and the greatest Hispanic golfer of all time, Trevino also is known for his unique golf swing, enormous personality and winning attitude. At the age of 27, Trevino captured the first of his two U.S. Open Championships in 1968 at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York the first of four times when legendary Jack Nicklaus finished second to him in a major. Trevino went on to win 29 times, including six majors – the 1968 and 1971 U.S. Open; the 1974 and ’84 PGA Championship; and the 1971 and ’72 Open Championship. He competed on six U.S. Ryder Cup Teams in three separate decades (1969, ’71, ’73, ’75, ’79, ’81), posting a 17-7-6 record, and went on to serve as U.S. Captain in 1985. He was the 1971 PGA of America Player of the Year and won five Vardon Trophies for season scoring excellence (1970, ’71, ’72,’74, and ’80). During an unprecedented four-week period in 1971, Trevino won in succession – the U.S. Open, Canadian Open and the British Open Championship.

A turning point in his career came when he played at Shady Oaks in Fort Worth and saw Ben Hogan on the practice range. From that day on, Trevino honed a fade that would make him one of the most accurate players the game has ever seen. Sometimes he would yell, “Don’t move, hole!” when he’d hit an iron at the pin.

On June 27, 1975 and during the height of Trevino’s career, he was one of three players struck by lightning, at the Western Open. He underwent several surgeries and battled back to win 29 more titles on the Champions Tour, a run that included the 1992 and 1994 Senior PGA Championships.

But Trevino called on the resiliency born of his beginnings. In 1980, he had one of his best years, winning the Vardon Trophy for the fifth time. His PGA victory at Shoal Creek was his crowning achievement. In all, he won 29 times on the regular tour. Later, he would equal that total on the Champions Tour.

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