PUNTA MITA, Mexico — Lee Trevino is difficult at work doing the 2 issues he does greatest: hitting a golf ball and speaking a mile a minute. Some 50+ members at Punta Mita Golf Membership, dwelling to 2 Jack Nicklaus designs, and VIPs of the WCW Mexico Senior Open have gathered across the observe inexperienced for Pacific and Bahia golf programs as Trevino treats them to a clinic on the brief sport and bunker play.
Trevino, who celebrated his eighty fifth birthday on December 1, hasn’t been slowing down. Simply final month, he did Q&A’s and clinics in Chicago, Little Rock, Arkansas, El Paso, Texas, Palm Springs, Calif., and this one in Mexico, the nation the place his grandfather, who helped increase him, emigrated from just a few years earlier than he was born.
“It’s a funny thing because, hell, I make more now than I did when I played,” he says with amusing. “This here, this is my home country. They’re buying my breakfast. That’s it. I told them, ‘Just buy me lunch and breakfast.’ ”
And so Trevino, one of many sport’s best wedge wizards, nonetheless is performing, leaving them laughing together with his trademark wit and knowledge and his viewers soaked all of it up till Trevino closed out the session by saying, “I’m done. We’re finished. I’m going to go lay down.” After all, he headed to the again of the vary and beat extra balls.
Completely happy birthday, Lee. Don’t ever change and thanks for sharing your wit and knowledge with all of us.
Lee Trevino hoists the trophy after profitable the 1984 PGA Championship on the Shoal Creek Nation Membership in Birmingham, Alabama. (Photograph: David Cannon/Allsport)
Trevino wore a Merry Mex striped shirt with the colours of the Mexican flag, navy shorts with a Folds of Honor belt and a black knee brace on his proper knee. He advised the attendees of the clinic that he was going to give attention to the brief sport. “You know I can hit the ball,” he mentioned. “My record tells you, you don’t need to see that anyway.”
After which Trevino summed up why he needed to emphasise the brief sport.
“You can go 400 yards in two rolling the ball and then it takes you three to get down to 20 feet. It kills you,” he mentioned, “and it’s because you don’t know how to hit a chip shot.”
“Unless this shot is going to be a bump here,” he instructed, “that’s the one time the membership is sq. to the goal.
“If you have any type of shot around the green and you want to support getting the ball up, then you have to play with an open club, mandatory. What happens to 90 percent of you, and I watch it every day is they play square, and then, for some awful reason in their mind, they think they’re going to have to open this club to go up. If they play with the club close, they’re right. You do have to. But you know what happens is the trunk of the trees going this way and the limbs are going that way — it won’t work. Once in a while it will, but the majority of the time it won’t work. So the secret is always remember that when you take a golf club back, it opens. I don’t know of anybody that plays golf that the club doesn’t open on the way back. All your job is is to hold it. You know how you close it? With the body, with the trunk. You see that? Isn’t that amazing. It takes a little practice but you aim at second base and the club is aiming at first base. The club is going to cover and be square when it gets to the ball. How does it do that? It’s going to do that with the body. The limbs are going to follow the trunk.”
Lee Trevino together with his son, Daniel, on Sunday on the PNC Father/Son Problem at The Ritz Carlton Golf Membership of Orlando.
Trevino claims he hits balls every single day for 90 minutes to 2 hours at dwelling in Dallas, sometimes at Preston Trails, however that he not often performs 18 holes anymore. He had simply come from taking part in within the member-guess at Massive Horn in Palm Springs and had stunned himself together with his good kind.
“I felt so good that I’m not tired,” he joked. “I played 54 holes, and I had 11 birdies. I haven’t had 11 birdies in three years.”
A lady within the viewers requested Trevino why he doesn’t prefer to play anymore and it drew a sometimes droll response from The Merry Mex.
“Don’t have to,” he mentioned. “I married a very wealthy woman.”
This led Trevino to recounting how he met his spouse Claudia on the PGA Tour cease in Hartford when she was a younger lady with a lemonade stand.
“I married her and she got all my money,” Trevino cracked.
Then he shared how he lastly realized be a loving guardian to his closing two youngsters.
“I acquired an excellent daughter. I had my boy late in life once I was 53. I really feel so unhealthy. I didn’t spend a lot time with my different children as a result of I used to be busy. However [Claudia] is Irish-Italian in Connecticut, and she or he advised me. She mentioned, ‘OK, we’re gonna have a few children, however you gotta perceive there’s no ‘I’ in group, don’t neglect it.’ “
Lee Trevino watches putt at Augusta Nationwide Golf Course through the 1982 Masters. Obligatory Credit score: File Photograph -The Augusta Chronicle through USA TODAY NETWORK
Who’s the best wedge participant Trevino’s ever seen? “Hubert Green was absolutely magnificent,” he mentioned. “Now you talk about guys with shotgun. Hubert Green hardly ever touched the grip he choked up so much when he chipped. But he was deadly.”
Trevino additionally shared a tip when he was brief sided and he needed to go up and cease it rapidly that he realized from the nice Seve Ballesteros. “One time I used to be combating the wedge and advised my spouse, I mentioned, ‘This damn wedge is just killing me.’ And she or he mentioned, ‘Have you ever done what Seve does?’ I mentioned, ‘Why are you watching Seve?’ She mentioned, ‘Watch Seve. He looks like he’s using a horse.’
“Seve didn’t like to give you any of his stuff,” Trevino mentioned. “I watched him and started practicing what he’d do. The arms are moving, nothing else is moving. Softer than a baby’s butt, right there, right? That was the 54-degree, not even the high-lofted club.”
Trevino hopped right into a inexperienced aspect bunker and started to dish out extra morsels of his genius. “If the sand doesn’t get on the green, you’re not going to get there.”
“People have it wrong,” he continued. “When you have a short bunker shot, you tend to swing easy, and when you have a long bunker shot, you tend to swing hard. Remember, if the club is open and you swing hard, it’s not going anywhere, because the sand flies off the club faster. Depth perception is everything with bunker shots, because you’re only using one club. The reason it goes farther is because you keep the sand on the club longer. The longer you keep the sand on the club when you hit a bunker shot, the farther it’ll go, the quicker it comes off, the shorter. So when we’re going short, we swing fast. And the reason we swing fast is because they’re not going anywhere. This ball is not going to go anywhere.”
Extra priceless Trevino knowledge as he went off on a tangent about cell telephones.
“My recommendation, particularly for the younger folks, depart your cellular phone within the automobile. These younger folks immediately are having a tricky time, as a result of this this factor is killing you, this telephone is killing you. God rattling, you take a look at that factor all day. You perceive, what the hell are you doing? I’ve the unique flip. I don’t take telephone calls as a result of everyone that calls me, desires one thing. Hey, are you able to do me a favor? I say, positive, however how are you going to pay me again?
“They know not to call me because I won’t answer. If you leave a message and I know who it is, you damn sure not going to get a call back because everybody that calls me wants something. Hey, can you do me a favor? I said, Oh, hell yeah. I said, ‘Now, how am I gonna get paid back?’ ”
Rory McIlroy, Lee Trevino, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods through the R&A Celebration of Champions four-hole problem on the a hundred and fiftieth Open Championship golf match at St. Andrews Outdated Course. (Photograph by Rob Schumacher/USA TODAY Sports activities)
After Trevino wrapped up the clinic, he caught round for some media interviews with the native media and responded to questions in Spanish. “My Spanish wasn’t so bad, was it? Oh, it’s terrible. You know, I didn’t learn to speak Spanish until I moved to El Paso (in 1965).”
Earlier than Trevino referred to as it a day, he did give the viewers one tip on the total swing.
“If you want to watch something with these great professionals, they are all swinging left. Nobody holds it down the line anymore. That’s old school.” No person goes down the road. No person goes this manner. As a result of why? The trunks transferring this manner, the limbs going that approach? That’s why we couldn’t hit it anyplace That’s how we had been taught. We couldn’t get any pace. These guys hit it 9 miles now as a result of Mac O’Grady and a few of the guys got here alongside and taught you go left. And if you wish to watch these nice gamers play, even these guys watch them. All of them get right here they usually race like hell to get to the left, after which they decide the ball up whereas they’re doing it. That’s what Nicklaus did. Ian Woosnam did it 100 years in the past. Right here’s what it’s like. It’s like having two flies on this step. Then you definitely acquired a fly there, and you bought a fly right here, and I advised you to kill this fly. That is what you do. You’re killing the fly.”
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Author : admin
Publish date : 2024-12-01 15:05:41
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