Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont (12 page)

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Authors: Adam Lazarus

Tags: #Palmer; Arnold;, #Golfers, #Golf, #Golf - General, #Pennsylvania, #Sports & Recreation, #Sports, #United States, #Oakmont (Allegheny County), #Golf courses, #1929-, #History

BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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“The damage has been done so the apologies [he telegrammed Sahara tournament officials to apologize] don’t do any good,” Trevino told reporters. “But I know that one hour after I had done this, I would have given $5,000 if I could have walked back out there and resumed play.”
A strong end to the 1972 season helped Nicklaus distance himself from Trevino and everyone else in earnings and victories. With second place in earnings all but locked up, Trevino, who had competed in thirty-one PGA tournaments during the year (compared to Nicklaus’s nineteen), stunned the family with a decision late in November.
After wrapping up a golf instructional television series, he returned to El Paso to spend Thanksgiving at home.
“I’m usually on the road playing tournaments this time of year. I decided it was time for a break, time to relax with my family and kind of get to know my wife and kids again,” he told a local reporter. “I just hope no one asks me to carve the turkey. It’s been so long since I’ve done it, I hardly remember how. For the past five years I’ve been eating bologna sandwiches for Thanksgiving.”
As Trevino settled down a bit with his family, he tried rededicating himself to golf. He vowed to give up drinking and jogged all winter. He dropped twenty pounds. Though he liked what he saw in the mirror, he didn’t like what he saw on his scorecards.
“[Losing the weight] ruined my swing, and I got moody,” he said. “Now I’m going back to enjoying the game and enjoying myself. If I put a big score on the board, well, I’m just not going to worry about it.”
The “ruined” swing manifested itself in his missing his first cut in over a year at Riviera in January’s Los Angeles Open. Although at first Trevino remained unconcerned by his struggles, the press and his beloved fans, dubbed “Lee’s Fleas”—two groups that had usually shown him unconditional support-speculated about the decline in his performance. That did not sit well with Trevino.
“They said I have not won since September [1972] and I’m in a slump. You just can’t win ’em all. No one can,” he responded gruffly. “If my fleas (his fans) don’t like it, well, I guess they’ll just have to go over to Jack [Nicklaus].” Trevino’s disarming candor remained intact, even if his cheery exterior was clearly eroding.
But Trevino’s change in public persona during early 1973 ran deeper. His fun-loving, devil-may-care reputation was mainly a facade. Trevino lived in constant fear that as quickly as he had become a star, it could all vanish in an instant.
“No matter how he clowns it up for the gallery, deep down inside he is insecure,” Bucky Woy observed. “It’s just that he never had anything in his life and has become superdetermined to succeed.... Miss the shot, and Lee Trevino fears he might slip back into his former life as a nobody.”
On the fairway at a VIP outing a few months after winning the U.S. Open at Oak Hill, Trevino had walked down the gallery signing autographs for fans, yelling out, “Tacos, get your red-hot tacos! Never know ... when my game will go and I’ll be out hustling in the streets again. Gotta keep my voice in practice.”
It was no wonder, then, why Trevino feverishly chased dollar bills, not trophies. As a child of poverty and the first superstar of Mexican descent in professional golf, he carried a burden of personal and professional insecurity that he could never shake.
But Trevino’s disdain for his detractors vanished once the tour left the West Coast in February and moved to the warmer, more familiar climes of the south-east, where his game responded to the change in playing conditions. With dramatic one-stroke victories at both Florida venues (Jackie Gleason and the Doral Open), Trevino proclaimed that “spring training now is over,” and he sprang to the top of the tour money list.
The return of his familiar exuberant mood was short-lived, however. During a fishing trip in mid-March, Trevino overdid it trying to yank a bass into his boat, and pulled muscles in his neck and chest. For the former marine who, the previous summer, had spent a week in a Texas hospital, then days later flourished in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, a minor muscle strain was not necessarily cause for concern. But the injury seriously hampered his performances for the next several weeks, thus rekindling his touchiness with both fans and the media.
In late April 1973, Trevino flew to Dallas for the Byron Nelson Golf Classic. Though he had finished second to Nicklaus the week before in the Tournament of Champions, the injury and his inconsistent play troubled Trevino as he returned to his hometown. The last thing his delicate temperament needed was a slew of people wanting a piece of the local kid and looking for a handshake, a photograph, or a courtesy appearance at a local event. (Around this time, Trevino was also fending off another distraction: a much ballyhooed challenge from daredevil Evel Knievel, who claimed that the pressures faced by golfers paled in comparison to those he faced.)
Trevino vowed to his wife to stay clear of the parties and hard drinking that were central to Texas country club hospitality, and to focus solely on his game. But the chest/shoulder/neck injury sustained a few weeks earlier—which he now told the press was the result of hitting the punching bag too hard during a spa workout—prevented him from finishing his swing. He played so poorly during the first round of the Byron Nelson that even his hometown fans deserted him: At any given tour event, Trevino’s gallery usually numbered over a thousand, but in Dallas there were less than a hundred people watching him by the end of the day.
Whether it was the injury, the humiliating nine over 79 that he posted, or a combination of both, Trevino immediately withdrew from the tournament after signing his scorecard, claiming he needed to see a doctor. The next day, he had to be “carried” into the St. Paul Hospital emergency room, where X-rays revealed he simply had strained muscles. Nonetheless, Trevino decided to rest for two weeks before returning to the tour—against his manager’s advice—to play in the Colonial Invitational in Fort Worth in early May.
“Man, I’ve got to play,” he said. “I can’t stand another week off, because I need the money.”
Trevino certainly did not
need
the money. By gutting his way through the injury to a second-place finish three weeks later at the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic, Trevino passed the million-dollar career earnings mark. And he left Tennessee with more than just the $16,000 in prize money.
In typical spendthrift Trevino fashion, he purchased a $30,000 Dodge motor home he believed would solve all of his personal problems. Pregnant with their third child, Claudia could not fly around the country to see her husband, and with Lee booked practically every day for tournaments and appearances, he hardly saw his family. The RV, equipped with a full kitchen, showers, toilets, stereo, and a color television to entice his daughter and four-year-old son (later that year, Trevino estimated he’d seen him “about sixty days since he’s been born”), was spun as a way for the family to enjoy much-needed quality time.
But Trevino had other intentions for the conspicuous motor home.
“I don’t sleep and live in this vehicle but it’s where I go after a round to relax and get away from the crowds. I guess I have lost some of my effervescence or my enthusiasm for showing it. I feel like I am hiding seven days a week. The demands on me have become so numerous that I just can’t put up with all of it. I realize the image I have made but it’s been very tough lately to maintain it.”
In early June, Trevino drove his locker-room-on-wheels north to Pennsylvania. With the IVB Philadelphia Golf Classic scheduled the week before the Open and only a five-hour drive from Oakmont, Trevino headed to Whitemarsh Valley Country Club to sharpen his game.
Though he made sure to joke and smile for photographers and reporters, Trevino’s patience for the burdens of celebrity continued to wear thin, despite his mobile home/hideout. After a very poor opening round in Philadelphia, he posted a strong 68 on Friday, but he could no longer conceal his mounting frustration before the enormous gallery that came to watch him. Though he occasionally bantered with the crowd, he kept to himself far more than usual, and when he jerked his drive far into the left rough on the eighth hole, he lost it. He bolted over a hill to locate his ball, leaving his caddie in his wake.
“Where you going?” asked his caddie, to which Trevino responded for the crowd to hear, “I’m playing about eleven more holes; then I’m getting the hell out of here.”
The people who heard Trevino’s comment held their breath for a moment-then smiled and laughed. Later, in a moment of less ambiguous disgust, Lee slammed the head of his putter into the turf.
“I’m wasting a whole week,” he said. This time there were no laughs from the fans.
The following afternoon, after opening his third round with four bogeys that produced a dismal 77 and left him fifteen strokes behind the leader, Trevino walked into the scorer’s tent and, without offering any excuses, announced he was withdrawing from the tournament.
“Mentally, I wasn’t here [in Philadelphia],” he said. “I wasn’t playing good and there didn’t seem to be any point in keeping on with it.”
The next day, Sunday, Trevino left Philadelphia and drove west toward Pittsburgh, finally to become acquainted with Oakmont Country Club. He had never seen the fabled course, and if he wanted to get his game back on track and win a remarkable third U.S. Open in six years, he would need time to prepare.
Of course, getting out of town fast was also wise to escape the wrath of the Philadelphia press. Still, Trevino could not hide from his fans.
“We were going on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and the guy handing out the ticket at the booth says, ‘Thanks, Lee. Good luck next week.’ And I’m in the backseat of the car.”
The price of celebrity only mounted after Trevino arrived in Pittsburgh. The people of Pittsburgh—an unusually friendly and folksy group for a major city—immediately recognized him and acted as if they were best buddies. When he went into a small grocery store to pick up a few essentials, he was mobbed by well-wishers and never even got a chance to shop. He constantly felt backed into a corner.
“I can’t go into a restaurant and enjoy a dinner. I eat two meals in my motel room most every day. I’d like to go into a bar now and then with my friends and just sit down and have a quiet drink, but I can’t. Privacy is getting harder to get. I just don’t have any privacy, really.”
To remedy that problem, Trevino sought and got permission to park his motor home in a partially secluded area near Oakmont’s driving range for the duration of the Open. Before beginning his practice round on Monday, he met with reporters and detailed the continuing headaches caused by his fans’ persistent adulation.
He was most fond of telling reporters a story about how he sat in the back of a movie theater to escape notice, yet was still approached by the theater manager, who asked for an autograph and urgently sent the usher to fetch Trevino a Scotch on the rocks. “Look, I love to have fun, tell jokes, but then I’ll go and hide. You’ll never see me in the evening.”
The only real privacy Trevino could find was inside the ropes on the golf course.
After his first practice round, finally relieved to be addressing questions about golf, Trevino discussed his thoughts about Oakmont. Considering that this Open was being played in Arnold Palmer’s backyard, Trevino graciously deferred to him, even when King Arnie suggested that Trevino’s style of low, left-to-right shot making might not be optimal for low scoring at Oakmont.
But when another aging tour legend offered his opinion about Trevino’s chances of winning the 1973 U.S. Open, the “Not-so-happy Hombre” immediately reappeared, and with attitude.
Billy Casper, whom Trevino had admired early in his career, told the press that big hitters such as Nicklaus and Weiskopf had a ten-stroke advantage at Oakmont due to their length off the tee. Trevino, who was known more for consistency and accuracy than prodigious distance, fired back.
“I thought that was a cute quote in the paper the other day, what Casper said.... He wasn’t talking for me. He wasn’t talking for the Mex. He was talkin’ for himself. As for me, I’m ready to win. I’m not going to run off and hide, no matter what happens on the golf course.”
Not everyone shared Casper’s concerns. In fact, Weiskopf—the longest straight hitter in golf, said Sam Snead—regarded Oakmont as a fairly short course for a U.S. Open. And even after his poor performance in Philadelphia, the oddsmakers still regarded Trevino as a six-to-one favorite to win, second only to Nicklaus.
But Oakmont’s most demanding test, everyone agreed, had nothing to do with the need for power. The course’s greatest challenge lay in the slickness and confounding curves of its putting surfaces.
“This thing will be won or lost at the greens,” said Trevino. “They’ll eat you alive. But they’re not going to chase me away from this place. No, sir, I’m not going to get mad.... There is only one U.S. Open and they can’t kick me off this place, because somebody’s gonna win and it might be me.”
 
THURSDAY MORNING, SPIKES ON AND dressed in black from head to toe, Trevino opened the door of his motor home and headed for the practice tee. During the opening two rounds, Trevino would be dwarfed in size and strength by the other members of his threesome, six-foot-two-inch J. C. Snead and six-foot-three-inch Jerry Heard. But the Merry Mex’s career achievements towered over both of theirs, and over all but a half dozen or so of the remaining men in the field. No one, not even Nicklaus, had won more major championships in the previous five years.

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