Lee Trevino, first ballot Hall of Famer
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There is rarely a dull moment when Lee Trevino take dais
That was the case Tuesday at Pleasant Valley Country Club, in Little Rock, Ark., where the 85-year-old legend fielded questions from the press before the Simmons Bank Championship.
In true Trevino fashion, his answers were free-flowing and wide-ranging, touching on everything from memories of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer to why he doesn’t watch many NFL games. (“Not many Mexicans playing soccer,” he said.)
Among other topics he covered: golf course design.
Unlike Nicklaus, Palmer and other famous golfers of his generation, Trevino never branched out into the golf architecture business. And as he readily admitted, he hasn’t seen as many courses as most of his peers.
“I started late in life, as you well know,” Trevino said. “I was 28 years old when I started playing professional golf. The only golf course I knew before was Tenison Park, which was a public course in Dallas.
Bottom line: He didn’t get much travel companions.
“I missed him a lot,” Trevino said. “I missed out on a lot of great courses that I didn’t play.”
But what kind of courses do you consider great?
Asked to name the best US Open venues, Trevino spoke highly of the usual suspects, including Oakmont, Pebble beach AND Merionthe site of one of Trevino’s two US Open victories.
Hard to argue with any of them.
The strangest comments came when Trevino turned to modern course design. Here, Trevino began to talk about blind strikes and hidden dangers. He is not a fan and thinks they were created for the wrong reason: to defend against the best players in the world.
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“One of the reasons architects in my opinion are hiding things is simply because they’re trying to make them — we’ve fallen into a place of trying to make a challenging golf course for the pros,” Trevino said. “That’s not where the backbone of this game is. The essence of this game is in the high handicap, in the middle handicap, in the lady’s player, in the junior.”
He is right about the backbone of the game. But what about modern course design? Perhaps he was thinking of the 1990s. In recent decades, a modern-minimalist movement has created almost the opposite of what Trevino describes. Under the influence of designers such as Bill Coore, Tom DoakGil Hanse and David McLay Kidd, to name but a few, the emphasis has fallen on approachability and fun.
Now more than ever, courses are being built with the average recreational player in mind. Among the resulting trends is a move away from golf as a high-flying air raid. At many of today’s top courses, from Bandon Dunes to Gamble Sands and Streamsong and beyond, designers are encouraging ground play, giving players a variety of options beyond the standard Tour pro power play.
Trevino seems to see things through a different lens.
“What they’re doing is they’re starting to make golf courses where everything is portable,” Trevino said. “You can’t spin the ball on the green anymore. There’s no such thing as an open green ahead, you know. They’re going to put that green where it kind of boomerangs and bunker the whole front and sides.”
Actually, they don’t. Not these days. But let’s not hold it against Trevino. By his own account, he doesn’t have a ton of courses, and even if he’s not keeping up with the latest design trends, he understands one truth about good storytelling: You don’t always have to leave the facts. to hinder.
