The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Trevino -- The Hispanic Yogi Berra of Golf

It's March Madness which means that during our lunch hour the restaurant we were in had several monitors displaying NCAA basketball playoff games. During one of the commercial breaks we were reminded that The Masters, one of pro golf's premiere events, is just around the corner. This triggered a debate between two of the men at our table. Topic: What is the greatest single sporting event championship in the world? No one dared suggest Super Bowl, though I was inwardly wondering whether soccer's World Cup might qualify. The golfer at our table declared it to be the Masters. His opponent placed his bet on America's Cup, whereupon this comment was made: "Yacht racing? That's like watching paint dry" along with several follow-up barbs.

While these jokes were being made at the expense of America's Cup, my mind slid back to a handful of golf-themed memories from my youth. Golf had been one of my father's passions, so we were introduced to the game quite early. When we were kids in Cleveland he'd drive us to a certain stretch of forest adjacent to golf course where he'd have us do a scavenger hunt for golf balls. He knew exactly where to have us look, because a few of these may have been his at one time.

I later caddied for a couple years while in high school, and enjoyed the benefit of playing for free on Mondays. Though my skills never advanced beyond being a hack, I enjoyed the game and followed the pro circuit enough (via Sports Illustrated and televised tournament golf) to know who the name were. My dad was part of Arnie's Army, the nickname given to the fans and followers of that golf great whose chief adversary (and respected friend) was the "Golden Bear" Jack Nicklaus. I myself liked the South African Gary Player, in part because he always wore black, like an outlaw of sorts.

And then, there was Lee Trevino.

Lee Trevino

Here's the story about Lee Trevino that most stood out for me. Before turning pro he used to make money by putting money on the game. I believe I read in Sports Illustrated that he had a giant Pepsi bottle that he used to play golf with. He would bet against other golfers that he could beat them using only a Pepsi bottle against their full set of clubs. He purportedly made pretty good that way. If I have my facts right, this may have been what pushed him to compete in the pros.

His achievements were many, and in 1971 he became the first player to win the U.S. Open, British Open and Canadian Open the same year. In fact, he did it in a three-week span.

Trevino also had another unusual threesome. He has been purportedly struck by lightning three times, one of them during the 1975 Western Open. The odds of being struck by lightning during your lifetime, for what it's worth, are 300,000 to one, though I'm guessing your odds might improve considerably if you're routinely out on a fairway when storms roll in.

Lee Trevino grew up very poor. He has no memory of his father who abandoned the family while he was very you. At age five he was helping bring in an income picking cotton. How he emerged from these roots to become an elite golfer is a tale for another place in time.

Baseball fans are well acquainted with the Yogi Berra's Yogi-isms. (Susie and I frequently recite his restaurant quip, "No one eats there anymore because it's too busy.") Lee Trevino's way with words can be equally entertaining. Here are ten Trevino statements to get you started.

1. The older I get, the better I used to be.

2. If you are caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron.

3. Pressure is playing for ten dollars when you don't have a dime in your pocket.

4. When you're poor, you know nothing about the future, you know nothing about the world, nothing that goes on outside 300 yards around you.

5. You're Mexican until you make money and then you're Spanish.

6. Golf is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of a bagpipe.

7. My swing is so bad I look like a caveman killing his lunch.

8. I'm not out there just to be dancing around. I expect to win every time I tee up.

9. I'm not saying my golf game went bad, but if I grew tomatoes, they'd come up sliced.

10. Every golfer should come to the first tee with fourteen clubs, a dozen balls, a handful of tees, and at least one great golf story.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Give it your best shot.

Photo courtesy Creative Commons.

Throwback Thursday: A Tip For Memoir Writers

"It is a mistake to intend to write only very important things in a journal. That is not its justification." ~ Andre Gide

In seeking a theme for today's blog entry, I came across the quote above in one of my journals from the early nineties. Nobel prize-winning author Andre Gide, once significant and pretty much now forgotten, wrote near eighty books. As editor of The New French Revue he introduced the world to many significant writers in the first half of the twentieth century. As a journal writer myself, who once nurtured the hope of being significant in literature, I read the journals of many writers from Fitzgerald and Gide to Thomas Mann and a number of lesser lights. The experience was instructive, Gide's four volumes being the most instructive and insightful.

The Gide quote above was useful for me in the following manner. If you only permit yourself to write thoughts of world class, earth shattering significance, you will in short order become paralyzed by the effort. Sure, it's good to have high standards, and a journal can be useful in training one to capture ideas and emotions that are indefinite and ambiguous, but if today's journal note or blog entry has to be the most significant thing you have every captured in lines, well... it makes you tired. It can not sap your joy, but also stifle you.

As an artist I find this to be a liberating attitude when you don't have to produce a masterpiece with every canvas. Instead of striving to make masterpieces every time pen touches paper, or brush smears paint on a surface, I can take pleasure in the act of creative discovery. I can even throw some of it in the trash.

All this to say, I don't have much that is really burning to be expressed here other than the desire to share a few photos I have taken. And then, to work my way through my "to do" list.

Have a great one. And let the sun shine in.

* * * *
The above blog entry originally appeared here on Novermber 1, 2008.

PHOTO CAPTIONS

Top: Pottery studio ten miles south of Monterrey, 1981.

Middle: Two trains, Superior railroad yards, Fall 2008.

Bottom: Alphabet stencil over current Hispanic magazine. Stencils purchased in Athens, Ohio, 1974.

I Like Taco Salad

A few years back I heard a remarkable statistic while attending a seminar on Marketing to Hispanics. The speaker stated that there were more Hispanics in the United States than there were Canadians in Canada. For this reason, she said, we need to learn how to communicate this growing market.

This month's Hispanic magazine cited a number of statistics that reveal much about the changing face of our American demographic.

In 1990 there were but 22 million Hispanics in the U.S., approximately 9% of our population. In 2006 there were 44 million Hispanics, or 15%, with this being the fastest growing people group in in our nation. Education levels have increased by near fifty percent and purchasing power has risen dramatically, from $212 billion in 1990 to $863 in 2007. Last year, for the first time, Hispanic buying power exceeded African American purchasing power.

Latino clout goes beyond the dollar signs. Increasing numbers of Latinos have taken seats on the board or as presidents and CEOs of America's leading corporations. And there is no denying the power of the ballot box in future elections as the population of Hispanics is projected to rise to 61 million by 2025 to 100 million by 2050.

Based on emails that I receive, there is a lot of fear out there with regard to this Latino power surge. Having lived a year each in both Mexico and Puerto Rico, it's a fear that I do not fully comprehend. People are people and from my experience there are wonderful people everywhere. Maybe it's the politics of it all that gets people riled, I don't know. In whatever shade it appears, however, racism is wrong.

From its very inception this nation has prided itself on being a melting pot. A melting pot metaphor can be a misnomer if it means we all give up our personal flavors and become a gigantic, tasteless stew. I prefer another metaphor. We're really a tossed salad, as we not? We preserve our personal heritages while simultaneously being flavored by those around us.

Disney got it right with his "It's a Small World" vision. The idea of a Global Village likewise touches this same truth. Red and yellow, black and white, we're all precious in His sight. Rodney King got it right, too. "Why can't we all just get along?"

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