TALKING TO TREVINO

When Lee Trevino was struck by lightning at the Western Open in 1975 at Butler National, it nearly killed him but didn’t phase his sense of humour.

“Damn, I thought to myself,” he would later write in They call me Super Mex, “This is a helluva penalty for slow play”. It’s a helluva a book too, if you are looking for a recommendation, even though he wrote it nearly four decades ago.

It was ironic too, because just a week before he was struck, Trevino played in the U.S. Open at Medinah, and as thunder rumbled overhead he joked to the gallery: “I’m not scared of lightning. I’ve made my peace with the Lord and he promised he wouldn’t throw any darts at me.”

Trevino turns 81 in December and his life has been an incredible journey, from a childhood living in a small wooden house with dirt floors, without plumbing or electricity, to becoming a winner of six major championships and one of the greatest golfers of the 20th century.

We’ll leave the tale of the lightning strike here because it has been told many times and because Trevino has so many more stories to tell.