Lee Trevino ’s first experience in golf was as a pre - teen search golf game ball attain out of boundary into a sphere near where he lived – a simple four - room wooden sign with noelectricityorplumbing .
There was nowhere for him to go but up . He did on the forte of an overwhelming desire to do just that . He made himself a man of means play a plot at which he worked very intemperately .
carry in 1939 in Dallas , Lee Buck Trevino was provoke by his mother and a granddaddy . He left school after the eighth grade to earnmoneyfor the family by working at a par-3 course of instruction .
After service four years as an recruit in theMarine Corps , Trevino yield to work at the par-3 as well as at a driving compass .
But he made more money bet on himself at golf game – and not all of it the " traditional " kind . His most illustrious hustle was hitting his shot with the productive end of a taped - up Dr Pepper bottle and putting with the thin end , a la billiards .
As his biz with realclubsimproved , the bets got bigger and so did the competition . Once in the early sixties , Raymond Floyd – already a nationally acknowledge golfer who also liked to toy high - stakes golf off the PGA Tour – got accost up in Texas against a fellow named Trevino . Floyd left light in his billfold , and he was glad to be destitute of the then - unknown Mexican - American with thetattooswho putt with the fine touch of a safecracker and had even more heart . Of of course , Floyd would not be free of Trevino , nor would any other Tour golfer .
In his formative years , Trevino had a " classic " swing music , but it just did n’t work . He hooked the chunk bad under force per unit area . Then one day he watched from afarBen Hoganpracticing , and he liked the controlled left - to - right field fade Hogan hit , one after another . Trevino decided that flight practice was for him , and for five twelvemonth , on his own , he worked on a means to accomplish it .
In the remnant , it did n’t look at all like Hogan ’s swing , if only because of Trevino ’s short , chunky body-build , but he got the same answer . And then some . No one questions the assessment that Trevino became the honorable bollock - striker since Hogan . In the 1990s , he was once ask when he last hit a nut out of boundary . In all seriousness , he couldn’t remember . Nor could anyone else .
Lee Trevino turn professional in 1960 , but he somehow never join the PGA of America and thus did not qualify to wager on the Tour , then run by that organization . He had to play in open consequence , and in 1965 he acquire the highly competitive Texas State Open .
In his first U.S. Open , in 1966 , he made the cut of meat and finish 54th . He continued to drill , give some lesson at an El Paso club where he was an supporter professional , and bunco on the golf game course to take fear of a turn kinfolk by his first married woman . It was she who suggested Trevino enter the 1967 U.S. Open , being play in New Jersey .
Lee Buck Trevino scrape together some money , lived inexpensively far from the class ( Baltusrol G.C. ) , and made his name known for the first metre outside of Texas by finishing a very solid fifth in the championship .
With the $ 6,000 he took in , and a screening that enabled him to get into subsequent Tour event that year , Trevino won another $ 20,000 . He was set , financially and secret plan - wise to , to set about his intrusion of major - league professional golf . He was indeed an overnight superstar .
At the 1968 U.S. Open , Trevino stayed close to the lead through three round , then canned two bird putts at the 65th and 66th holes with a combined duration of 55 substructure to ice triumph .
He became the first to ever gain ground a U.S. Open with all four round of golf in the 60s . The brilliant golf game , fuse with a speedy and funny wit deliver with the panache of a stand - up comedian , turned Trevino into a heading favorite .
From 1968 - 84 on the PGA Tour , Trevino won 27 times , including another U.S. Open ( in a playoff with Jack Nicklaus ) and two PGA Championships , the last coming at the years of 44 .
Not even lightning could stop him . Trevino ( along with golfers Jerry Heard and Bobby Nichols ) was struck bylightningduring romp in the 1975 Western Open . Still , at 36 , he retrieve enough to win nine more PGA Tour events , include his 2d PGA Championship ( 6th major ) and 26 Senior Tour events from 1990 - 95 .
Near the end of 1995 , however , Trevino had major back OR in which a permanent plate was inserted through his neck to mix disks .
The back trouble may have derived in part from the lightning thunderbolt , but more probable it result from having hit 100 of recitation ball every day , day in and day out , for yr .
All the heavy study had at long last caught up with him , but by then the poor kid from the other side of the track had become amultimillionaire – and one of the most realised and democratic golf player the biz has ever seen .
