Lee Trevino taught me 10 lessons in 38 minutes. Here

On a cloudless early winter morning, the legendary Lee Trevino pulled up in a golf cart to the end of the driving range and made the announcement.

“I’m not giving away any secrets!”

It wasn’t clear what he meant for a while. Had Trevino canceled our shoot? The producer and I, attracted by time and a dream guest, flew at the last minute to Punta Mita, a golf course (and resort-slash-community) in the southwest of Mexico, to conduct a variety session with one of the golf-time greats. The morning view of the Pacific rolling along the rocky shore was worth the trip, but we were hoping to capture more than just sunrises and sunsets, so Trevino’s warning set off some alarms. Golfers can be tough creatures, after all – and Trevino has earned the right to drive his shot.

But Lee’s son, Daniel, who had come with him, rolled his eyes.

“I think you’re messing with yourself,” she said.

We breathed a sigh of relief. Elder Trevino was, in fact, messing with us, creating chaos in an otherwise calm place. With a twinkle in his eye, Trevino took the sword from his bag, rolled over the ball in the pile and entered our latest and greatest episode of “Warm Up.” And while there were a few things Trevino actually he didn’t he wants to share – he keeps some secrets of his clinics, he explained – he really didn’t hold back. What followed was 38 minutes of golf gold, delivered by a six-time major champion and inaugural Hall of Fame speaker.

I will encourage you to watch everything; that’s kind of the point of the thread, Trevino’s batting or his commentary isn’t in text, and you can find the YouTube link below.

But read on, too, for 10 things I learned from Lee.

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1. You still have it.

Trevino is well aware of his age — “most people sit down at 85,” he says — but he doesn’t let that stop him. Every morning he wakes up and goes to the place where he will hit the balls for two hours. He is not preparing for the competition. He has no competitive goal in mind, he says. But he knows his practice sessions are important though.

“Golf still means everything to me because this is where I made my living. This has been my whole life,” he said. He laments the loss of swing speed. But does he ever wake up worried that his game has thrown him away?

“No, no, no,” he said. “The good Lord gave me a talent. And he hasn’t taken it away from me.”

2. Every gun needs a purpose.

Does Trevino like to work football? Hooks, fades, highs, lows? Have you ever. Hearing him tell you, that’s the whole point.

He says: “I don’t care what is being shot, it has to have a purpose.” “And you have to work the ball to the right, you have to work the ball to the left.”

There is a philosophy here – it involves some math.

“The reason that [working the ball] it’s just because of the percentages. If you hit the ball from left to right, aim 20 feet to the left. And it doesn’t work well, you’re 20 feet away from the hole. If you are working at 20 meters, you are close to the hole. If you are working at 30 feet, you are 10 feet away from the hole. If you are working at 40 ft, you are 20 ft from the hole.

“Now, if you try to hit it straight and you hit it 40 feet to the right, you’re 40 feet from the hole.”

This, of course, assumes that when you try to hit the fade you don’t just snap-hook the remaining 100 feet instead. (That would leave you 120 feet away!) But Trevino may not have missed that much since the 1950s.

3. “The hardest shot in golf” is not what you would expect.

The hardest shot in golf — except for the 60-yard shot, Trevino admits — is often overlooked. No one thinks much of it until they screw it up: getting out of trouble.

“It’s when you go into the trees on the right and you can’t go down to the flag,” Trevino said. “And you have to cross the fairway to putt.”

The challenge, he explains, is carrying it far enough that you can get through rough terrain and onto the fairway but not so far that you bounce into rough spots — or trees, or worse — on the other side. It is very important to jump out of trouble, but no one works on this particular shot in practice.

“So this is something you have to practice. You can’t just go out on the driving range and hit golf balls. You have to have a purpose. You have to change your grip. You have to change the position of the ball. You have to change how far you are from the ball.”

4. There is one young golfer he admired the most: Scottie Scheffler.

Trevino and World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler have more in common than high kicking feet and happy feet. They also became members of the same Dallas area club, the Royal Oaks, when Scheffler was about eight years old. (Trevino has been a member since 1970.)

“He goes out and joins and gets out there and he’s going to be wearing green; he would like to put in nickels,” Trevino recalled. “I wouldn’t put him down because I wouldn’t beat him.

“And he always had long pants as a little kid. He never wears shorts. [We’d ask]’Why aren’t you wearing shorts?’ Because I will be a champion one day. And professionals don’t wear shorts.’”

Even as a child, Trevino says he had never seen anything like Scheffler.

“I have played [Jack] Nicklaus all my life. No one has ever hit the ball like this guy.”

5. He will never change a person’s swing.

“I’ve never changed someone’s golf swing because they have an instructor,” Trevino said. “But not ten percent of people who play golf, including professionals, know the mechanics. Know why the ball did something.

“You see, the golf ball will tell you what to do,” Trevino said, then deliberately hit the ball. “People will say, ‘Oh, Jesus. I moved, I…’ No you didn’t. You were fine. He has the ball too far forward [in your stance].

The golf club, Trevino explains, is like a pendulum in the golf swing. Get down on the swing. Make sure the ball is there when you do. Changing the swing itself is a very difficult battle and not one you need to take on.

“The owner [your swing]. You can’t change it. It’s like trying to teach a boy to walk differently. It’s like trying to teach someone to speak differently. You won’t do it. But you don’t change someone’s swing — you can change their hands and you can change the position and it makes a difference.

6. There is one pro on Tour who swings as slowly as Lee.

Trevino is such a beloved presence in the golf world that it’s easy to forget how he got here.

“The question has always been who instructed me, who taught me to play,” he recalled. “I learned to play in the pasture, in the field by myself. I didn’t start playing well until I was 27, maybe 28. I was in the Navy for four years. When I got out of the Navy I went to work for a construction crew building a golf course, not even playing golf. I started playing when I was 22. By the time I was 25 I had won the US Open.”

Five more majors (and nearly 100 wins around the world) would follow.

“But I learned to block the ball. The only guy playing like that right now on the tour [Daniel] Berger. He leads behind the left hand. That’s what I do. The back of the left hand does not rotate. The trunk is beating [the ball]. The trunk moves the limbs.”

Tiger Woods has explained noise Trevino’s swing is different than other golfers. Trevino says that’s because he puts a lot of pressure on the ball. There is no hand-wringing involved. There is no time involved. He blocks it, swinging down on the ball with the back of his left hand. It worked then and it works now.

7. With the wind blowing, Trevino could hit anyone.

Perhaps my favorite line of the session came when Trevino took himself to the British Isles for a weekend decades ago.

“When I went to play the Open Championship, when I woke up in the morning I looked out of the hotel window and saw the flags flying. whooshI said [here he grins wide]’Bring me a cup of coffee, we’re getting ready to pick someone up.’”

He followed that up with another one-liner — “I don’t like to hit 3s because the bugs end up having to put their hats on” — but he explained a bit of the cleverness that helped him two open topics.

“I was able to make it a twin.” I can take the driver and beat him to the ground.”

8. Even though he was an all-time pro, he got the yips.

I mean Trevino can put it together in the Open this year, based on the batting clinic he put on the show. He agreed. There was one thing that would stop him, however.

“If I could put it,” he said. “I got the yips so bad that I have to wear four pairs of underwear when I play. Then I change about every six holes and end up with one clean pair.”

9. Open your clubface when you chip.

It’s hard to write this tip – you’ll have to watch it – but Trevino insists you don’t play with a square clubface but instead start with your club facing the first base.

He says: “He brings his body to football. “Trunk will cover it.”

Lee shows another way of thinking about this (don’t kill the fly – you can do that by smashing it up – but hold on fly instead) but you’re better off just watching this one. You will gain confidence.

10. It went quickly.

Want to know what it’s like to accumulate decades of legend, decades of golf knowledge, decades of a meaningful golf life? One line Trevino shared was from a beloved round, the last of Arnold Palmer’s competitive career. They were both sitting in the locker room after the round and Trevino could see his older peer feeling the weight of the moment.

“She’s got tears rolling down her cheeks, and now she’s treating me badly,” Trevino said. “I didn’t know how to start him because his lip was trembling and he didn’t say anything.

“And I looked at him and said, ‘It went fast, didn’t it?’

The decade since that round has also flown by, Trevino said, though it’s been another memorable decade in an unforgettable golf life. There is a deep lesson there, one that is too strong to be limited to a simple list.

You can watch Warming Up with Lee Trevino here or in the player below.

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