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THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT

June 2, 2004

Lee Trevino

DUBLIN, OHIO

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Mr. Trevino, for joining us for a few minutes in the media center at the Memorial. Congratulations on being one of the two 2004 Memorial tournament honorees.

LEE TREVINO: Thank you. A pleasure.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Make a couple comments on that for us.

LEE TREVINO: My comments were outside, but you guys can't print until I do this. I have a funny story kind of behind that, because last year about this time my wife and I were going to a baseball game, and my little boy, ten years old, playing for a little league team, and as we were driving to the game, I said, "Today is Wednesday." I said, "Memorial starts tomorrow." She says, yeah. I said, "I don't know if Jack is waiting for me to die or what, but I think it's getting close to my time." She says, "What are you talking about?" I said, "Jack honors a player every year on Wednesday at the Memorial at 3:00 o'clock, because I watched it on the channel," and I said, "It wouldn't surprise me if he called me sometime this year." This is the gospel truth. I'm not lying to you. We sit there, we take our chairs out, sat just behind the dugout on the third baseline. My wife is sitting to my right, and I hear her cell phone ring, and it's about 9:00 o'clock in the evening, I guess, 9:00, 9:30, and my wife says, hello, and she said something, and she hands me the phone, and she said, "It's Jack." I said, "Jack who?"

"The guy you've been talking about this afternoon." It was a surprise and it was a pleasure getting the phone call, and I remember what he said.

Jack always calls me Pro, never called me by my name, and that's the way some people are, and I call him Pro all the time. He says, "Hey, Pro, how you doing?" I says, "I'm fine." He said, "We just finished with the Captain's dinner and you've been selected to be a nominee for 04," and he says, "Can you make it?" I says, "With bells on, I will be there." Here I am.

It took him, what, 14 years to get me back, because once it sleeted here, that was it for me. Do you remember that day? Some of you guys were here, Watson shot 69, I made a 19-footer on 18 for 79. I'll never forget it. Jack's locker was next to mine and I'm putting my stuff in the bag, and he said, "How did you play, Pro?" I said, "I made a 19-footer jiggling to death." I said, "I shot 79." And he said, "That's about par today." He says, "Where are you going?" And I said, "I'm going south until I hit some heat."

The course looks magnificent. There's a lot of trees that have been moved. He says he has a new superintendent from Oak Hill, I think. There's a lot of things that he's done here. I'll tell you this. When you come to a function like this, you think, I should have said this, I should have said that, I should have said this. I've got notes in my pocket. Everything comes from here to me. You've known me long enough that what's in this mouth comes out. I can come back next year and tell you what I've said last year because that's the kind of guy that I am. It doesn't surprise me that this tournament has grown to where it's at today, because it's probably the best tournament on Tour, no doubt about it. It doesn't surprise me a bit, because I saw initially when he started it what he was trying to accomplish.

When we came here, as some of you gentlemen who have been writing golf for a long, long time know, when we went to Fort Worth, what was one of the first golf tournaments that ever gave us free food, we had to sign, somebody had a sponsor, took care of it.

When we came here, Jack not only gave us the food, Jack was the first to give us one of the best driving ranges on the PGA TOUR. Some of the golf courses we played, it was -- you hit balls wherever you could. I remember Greensboro, you used to practice down the tenth fairway. That's where Harry Toscano got hit in the wrist and broke his wrist. He was going to be a hell of a player coming out of Houston. Chuck Cortney hit him with a duck hook, hit him in the wrist. We were practicing on the edge of the fairway on 10. We came here and looked at the oval driving range, it was big, and I see now where they've had to move the tee back because the guys hit too far, but we used to practice everywhere we could.

Jack was the first to have new golf balls. I remember he had brand new MacGregor balls on the tee. I used to tell him what he spent on the balls and what he spent on the food, we wished he would have not given us that and put it in the prize money, because I think he spent more money on the food and practice balls than he did on the prize money back in those days.

He tweaked and he tweaked and he tweaked this golf course until it was acceptable to all players, and they enjoy playing here. I just never agreed with the weather. I love the golf course, and I played well here. I think the best I finished, 5th maybe, 7th one year, 78. I've played okay. It wasn't a real big demanding course when we first played it.

I remember the 3rd green was very difficult, remember the ball -- if you got on the left side you had to pay a little bit there, but we opened it. I opened it in, what, the spinning of 76 with the Skins game here with Miller and Weiskopf and Jack and I. Damn, I never won a skin. Then the cheapies gave me $5 apiece when we finished, and I took it.

It is a pleasure to be here. I don't know much about Joyce Wethered. Trevino I know a lot about, but I've been reading some of her accomplishments, and for Bobby Jones to say she was the greatest ball-striker he had ever played with had to be saying something, because I watched just about every film Mr. Jones made from, what, 20th Century Fox. Damn, he could hit that ball with ratty looking clubs. The bunkers shots, they had to be like knives and he gets the ball out like this (indicating) every time.

Q. You talked about ball striking. Jack said yesterday that you and Hogan were the two best that he had ever seen, and I think there was something recent that he can't distinguish which one was better than the other. He said you could hit more shots than anybody else?

LEE TREVINO: I don't think I was nearly as accurate as Mr. Hogan, but I thought that I could hit more shots than anybody. I learned to play golf a completely different way and I probably spent more time at it than anyone. When you have bad fundamentals, then you have to spend three times longer than anybody else. Harvey Penick put it perfect. If you have a good grip, you don't have to practice as hard as a guy that has a bad one.

No one ever taught me how to play. I did it in the back alleys, the back of ranges, did it in fields. It was never on the golf course, and I learned to hit the ball well and to work it left to right.

But I hit a lot of golf shots, but the ball worked. We were talking about the ball, it doesn't work nearly as much as it used to, but I think Mr. Hogan was much more accurate. Mr. Hogan, he overcompensated with the grip. He had a weaker left hand, and he had a weak right hand, and if you've ever read any books on Mr. Hogan, he always talked about hitting the ball with his right hand. He was a right-handed hitter. I am a left-handed holder.

Now, if you take me out of my environment, which is a long, demanding golf course, I am a dead man. I am totally dead. I couldn't play. If you put me on the right type of a Donald Ross golf course, eat your lunch. I will eat your lunch every time. If we stay there for four days I'm going to get you, because Donald Ross golf courses, they give me options. You can't put me in a position to where I don't have an option. An option means when I'm going into the green, I can hit six different shots. If you put me in a position to where I'm going into the green and I've got to hit 2-iron or a 4-wood, I'm a dead man, you see, and that's one of the reasons why I had the problems with Augusta, I couldn't hit the ball high enough and I would not change my game to go right to left and high only for that golf tournament, because I didn't want to -- I practiced one year for it doing that, trying to hit the ball high and left, and I left after 36 holes, and then it went too low on the last two days, and I shot 77, 78, but I did leave after two rounds.

On the right type of course -- the way that I play today, the way that I've played all these years, if I was coming on Tour today with my old game, I never would have made it. There's no question in my mind about it. People have said to me, oh, you'd find a way. Yeah, I'd find a way, I'd have to change like everybody else. In other words, I'd have to go weak hand, high hook, launch it, no shot-making. Wouldn't have been able to do any shot-making.

See, Tiger Woods, in my opinion, was way advanced. Tiger, when he was 22, 23 years old, was hitting golf shots that it takes players years and years and years to learn. He already knew those shots. I think I made a statement to Jaime Diaz that Tiger Woods had Jack Nicklaus' golf swing and mental capacity to map out a golf course, and he has my work ethics, and that combination is real dangerous. That combination is good.

That's one of the reasons that I changed golf clubs all the time. Very seldom you'll ever see me with the same putter or the same set of golf clubs, and the reason for it is, if I keep changing golf clubs I'll practice more. Think about it, if I get a set of clubs and I'm hitting it good, what the hell am I going to practice for? I already hit them good. When you get new stuff -- I've won tournaments using four different putters in a tournament. I won a tournament in Philadelphia with Herman Mitchell's clubs. I was hitting my clubs pretty bad, and I said -- Chester Valley there, "Did you bring your clubs?" He said yeah. I said, "Let me use them." I won the tournament. He said "I've got to have them back." I said, "You can have them." But if you took me out of my environment, I wasn't real good at it.

Q. What do you think, if anything, has happened to Tiger?

LEE TREVINO: What's that?

Q. Tiger. We keep trying to figure out why he isn't playing --

LEE TREVINO: I remember doing an outing in Kansas City with Tom and -- it was Gary Player and I and Nicklaus, and he kept talking about that these guys have got to come up and challenge, come up and challenge. I haven't said a word about these guys coming up and challenging. I just knew that Tiger had set a bar and it wasn't going to take forever for these guys to reach that bar.

Ernie Els, I just read something in the paper a couple of days ago where he says they're getting closer to him and closer to him, and also Tiger has been playing since he was five years old, competitively. He's 27 years old, so he's been playing 22 years. Most guys are retired by now after you play 22 years of competitive golf. God bless him. I think that he's taken a little time off.

I remember you guys writing poor old Jack off in 1978, 79. They kept saying, "Jack is boo. Jack is boo." What did I tell you? I said, "Don't you ever wake up a bear that's hibernating, because he's going to be mad." He comes back in 1980 and wins two majors. I said, "I told y'all to leave him alone." The same thing is going to happen with Tiger. Tiger is going to get to the point where if he doesn't win a major this year I wouldn't want to be playing against him in 05, wouldn't want no part of it, because he's coming. I think that players have gotten closer to him, no question.

Q. You've gone down the same road with Jack in terms of when you decided to get away from the game. When do you think Jack is going to retire?

LEE TREVINO: Well, I hope never. But again, you can't -- you have to get inside the man's body. I can tell you how I hurt. Six weeks ago I was sitting on the concrete, actually on the asphalt at Valencia. I am 5-under par with four holes to go, and I can't finish. I have spasms so bad in my back that I am rolling the ball down the fairway so I can just post a score on Sunday and get the hell out of there. I'm sitting up against this SUV in the parking lot and my wife is there and my little boy is there, and I said, "I can't move," and I found out what my problem was. I'm always right-sided so I started doing this stretching on my right side on the ball because there's a small muscle that goes underneath your rib cage and I had to get it out and that's where I was getting the spasms.

You don't know how he feels. Jack is a very intelligent person. Jack knows reality has set in. He knows that he can't play nearly what he used to, but he would love to play pain-free, and that's what I'd like to do. I don't know what the hell I'd do -- I might start drinking again. Maybe that's my problem. I quit 16 years ago, and that might have been what kept me feeling good. I know people that say, "I've got a bad back, but the more Scotch I drink the better I feel." He knows he can't hit the shots he used to hit. Hell, there was nobody that could hit long irons like he used to hit.

I remember in Hawaii playing the Skins Game, and I drive it down the fairway and he's down a downslope 245 to the flat, and I said, I've got him now because he can't get over that water, and he hit that 1-iron, went about 400 feet up in the air, came down 12 feet behind the hole, and you could have stuck a fork in me. I said, I don't know how he did that. He didn't mention anything to me. Last night we had the Captain's dinner and he said he's going to play this week and then reassess everything. But he hurts. I mean, what's he had, one hip or two hips done?

Q. One.

LEE TREVINO: Yeah.

Q. Who's better, Tiger or Jack?

LEE TREVINO: Well, I mean, Jack, his record is chiseled in granite, man. They're pretty similar at the same age, and I think Tiger may have won more tournaments than Jack did. What's Tiger won? 40, 38?

Q. 40.

LEE TREVINO: Right at 40. I'm going to tell you something. Tiger was not longer than Jack. Jack Nicklaus could hit a golf ball nine miles. If this equipment and this ball could have been available, he'd have been chipping back to some of those holes (laughter). He had a big athletic body, big legs, and I'm going to tell you, when he swung at that 43-inch double X steel persimmon head and hit it 300 yards, are you kidding me? It's telling you what he could do with this ball. He'd never find it. He'd have to have two caddies, one forecaddie and one back there (laughter). It's amazing what he could do with a golf ball. He always looked so relaxed. Did you ever see him? Palmer always talked about that. Palmer says, how the hell does he look so -- he's got a little interlocking -- Jack had very small hands, and he had an interlocking grip and he'd stand there, and he'd lock, and when he turned his head, and we'd sit there and watch him, turn your head, turn your head, because we knew if he turned his head he'd execute. He'd turn that thing and raise that heel up. Everybody talked about his elbow. It worked because with the heel going up, when the heel went down this elbow went down. They worked in unison. They went here.

Now, if this heel would have came up and he would have been in this position, it would have never happened, and he knows that, because when he puts this heel down, this elbow would have gone that way, so one worked with the other. He could generate a tremendous amount of power.

Q. What do you say about Tiger's swing, because there's a lot of talk about flaws in it now.

LEE TREVINO: We all have opinions with golf swings, you understand what I'm saying? Funny thing about golf, golf is a game of reverses. It's the most amazing thing in the world. If a guy wants to take a putt from here and he pushes the putter out and a guy said he pushes the putter out, you should miss it right, but you miss it left because it puts spin on the ball because it goes this way.

I work the golf ball in opposites. Subconscious mind is the strongest thing you have going for you. If you want to fade a golf ball, would you hold a club weak or strong? You would hold it strong. Why? You hold it here, right there, because in your mind you're saying if I go this way that ball is going that way. So you hold the club strong, hands forward, and you ride it right around and the ball will go there.

If you want to draw the ball, then you go the other way. What's the first thing they tell you when you want to draw a golf ball? Take your right foot and push it back, take your right hand and move it under. How much are you going to hook it? There's a lot of movement there. Tell you what you do. You stay square, aim to the right of your target, forget all that closing the blade. Right the right hand and weaken it. Now, what's your subconscious mind telling you? When I get right here I've got to turn that right hand. That's only going to turn that much more. Perfect hook.

If I was teaching Tiger, that's exactly what I'd tell him. I think his hands are too far back with the driver, that's why he gets it stuck behind him. He puts the driver there, and everyone knows if you take a slow motion picture of a gentleman or a lady hitting a golf ball in the hitting area, and you're going to hit that golf ball, what position are you in? You're not in a straight line. Jack always had a straight line. You never saw him going this way. He was always in a straight line. You could see it.

When he came back down, that club would be in a straight line. Well, if you start here, you understand how the club is going to be in a straight -- you're here when you hit it.

Now, watch what happens when you straighten up and leave your hand. You're there. The hands are going to be over your left toe when you hit a golf ball, and if they're not over your left toe when you hit a ball, then you're not going to be very accurate. The longer the golf club, the wilder you're going to be.

It's just plain and simple. If you want to fade it, grab it strong, put your hands forward and hold it. If you want to draw it, you can put your hands forward, right hand on top and hook it.

Q. So what would you tell Tiger?

LEE TREVINO: You weren't listening. That's what I'm telling you (laughter). I've got a little boy like that, too. I tell him the same thing. I would just tell him to think about reverses. In other words, strong grip, fade, weak grip, draw, and watch his hand position. He gets his hands too far back, see, and when your hands are back, that's what's going to happen.

Look at Jack's setup. Take out some old picture of his setup. I'd rather see him in the fairway 100 yards from the green because there was a chance he'd miss it with a wedge. He wasn't the greatest wedge player. If he would have been a wedge player he would have won 40 majors. I'm serious, he would have won 40.

I mean, he would be the first to tell you, until Phil Rogers started helping him, in other words, he's a pretty good wedge player now, but in our time, in the late 60s when I started playing, in the late 60s early 70s, he was terrible with a wedge because he never put it on the ground. He never would ground the club. Wedges are hard to hit if you don't ground the club. But out of a fairway bunker Jack was phenomenal. I'd rather see him anywhere but a bunker.

He hit a shot on me in a Skins Game at PGA West that I still dream about it. I mean, I really dream about it, because I don't know how it was possible. If you've ever played PGA West, you could bury elephants everywhere out there (laughter). PGA West, the hardest thing I've ever seen. He's in the fairway bunker on 10 on a Sunday morning with about six skins riding. We're in the fairway, he's in the bunker. We've got him.

Now, that bunker is up to that speaker. He's at the bottom and he's 175 to the flag. I see this man going in there with a 5-iron. I said, "What the hell is he going to do with that, go backwards?" (Laughter) I thought he was going to use it as a crutch and then the guy was going to throw him a wedge down there. He's sitting there, and he's standing there, and he goes -- (laughter). I almost jumped in that lake over there. It was too close, though. He hit it like that (indicating one foot). Greatest fairway bunker player I've ever seen.

See, that was just a continuation of his swing, his makeup, but he never grounded his club, so whether he was in the fairway or the rough or the bunker, his mannerisms and his setup was always the same. Boy, he was a bad wedge player, whoa. We used to stand up there and say, even money, $5. If he would have heard it, he would have said, I'll take it, but I'll miss it. If he could have played a wedge, oh, man, unbelievable.

Q. At the risk of interrupting your lesson, Jack talked about your obvious love affair you have to people, the color you brought to the game. You could say things to people and get away with it because you were so funny. Could you talk about where that comes from, and just bringing some personality to the game over those 30, 40 years?

LEE TREVINO: Well, it comes from -- from where I came from, there's always a big congregation of people going nowhere, making nothing, so the loudest guy gets listened to the most. You don't necessarily have to know what you're talking about, because no one you're talking to knows anything anyway, so you just start rambling on and rambling on. I think it came from more or less playing for quarter skins, dollar skins, stuff on the golf course. We'd played foursomes and fivesomes, needling guys, and you're confident in what you're doing. We were great needlers. You could get guys so angry that they were 12 handicappers and you were scratch and they'd play you for $10 just to keep your mouth shut, and then you'd needle them some more and that's how you got all your bets. That's actually where it came from.

I came from where I always served the public, always worked in a pro shop or a driving range, and I was always serving the public. I always prided myself in saying that I could sell ice cream in a blizzard. If it was snowing outside I could get guys to eat Eskimo Pies all day, this will warm you up, coffee will cool you down. You ever gotten out of a pool and you're cold? Same thing with eating this ice cream.

Q. When you first came out did you get funny looks like who is this guy?

LEE TREVINO: Yeah, but I won early. See, I won quick and early, so they said, "you know, the guy is for real then." I remember Bob Goalby telling Snead, Snead gave me my first lesson, I used to say, Sam, I can't get the ball in the air. He used to say, "stand behind it." Bob Goalby was always talking to Sam about, "boy, he talks a lot."

I can play both ways. People say, "if he doesn't get to talk, he's not going to be able to play." Not necessarily. When I'm home, I never talk to no one. I'm kind of -- I've had three cups of coffee this morning and I've been home for 27 days. I'm ready to talk (laughter). My wife doesn't listen to a damn thing (laughter).

That's like the program, I showed her that program last night. I said, "I'm going to tell you this: I bet Jack has never had a guy that looked this good." I said, "that boy is pretty, isn't he?" She said, "yeah, what the hell happened to you?"

Q. Would you talk about your Ryder Cup experiences? You were on six teams.

LEE TREVINO: Ryder Cup is a little different today than it was back then. I actually think I made it famous by taking the team over to the Belfry in 85 and losing. If there's anybody here from the British press, they will probably verify that if they're old enough to remember that, but it was getting to a point where we were so dominant in the Ryder Cup that they were having -- we weren't having big galleries.

I remember going and playing in Ryder Cups, and a lot of the guys will tell you the same thing, we never ate dinner or lunch or anything with the teams. We'd play practice rounds with our buddies from Europe. I remember hanging out with Barnesy because he and I drank a lot of red wine together and I remember Sammy Torrance playing a match on a Saturday morning -- no, on a Sunday morning. Dave Marr was the captain, and I got up at 6:30, Sammy Torrance comes down, and he goes, "where are you going?" I said, "I've got to go to the course." He said, "come on, I'll give you the ride." I did not know that I was playing him the first match at 7:30, so Sammy is driving in circles. I said, "Sammy, do you know where the hell you're going?" He said, "yeah, I'm going to London. I'm going to get a half a point today." I said, "well, how are you going to do that?" He said, "you and I are playing together." I beat him 7-6 or 6-5, but we were back before Jack ever got there for his match at 9:00 o'clock. We were already back.

We used to have just a great relationship and we partied together and did all these things together. Then in 1985 when I took a team over there and we got beat quite badly, then that's when the big interest started, and that's when they started having the rivalry and the galleries got into it. It's big now. When we used to play we were lucky if they broke even. The PGA didn't make any money. Now it's a big business.

I had a terrific time playing. The only guy that I had the hardest time with to beat was Bernhard Gallagher, the little Scotsman. He was a tough little cookie, this guy, and I probably lost -- if you look at my record, I lost seven times, I think, that's all I've lost in the Ryder Cup. I have a pretty good record, probably three or four of those matches were against Bernhard Gallagher.

Q. You talked about shots that you've seen Jack hit. What's the best shot of your career?

LEE TREVINO: Well, I was going to use that one today, also. My best shot of the career was the 1967 DHC on the 13th hole. I was qualifying for the U.S. Open at Baltusrol, and I had driven the ball too far to the right in a little ravine, and I was behind some trees, and I was using an old Irving King 4-wood, and I just took the biggest swing you have ever seen at this wood, and the ball went over the trees, and I'm watching this thing, on the green, and I made the putt for eagle and got the fourth spot to go to Baltusrol, where I finished 5th, and that was the start of my career, and that was the greatest shot that I think I've ever hit.

Q. If you could start over again, having said that, would you do anything differently?

LEE TREVINO: Yeah, the only thing I probably would have done differently is I would have probably tried to play the game with the fundamentals a little bit better, plus I would have probably spent more time with my first family. I never spent much time with my first family because I was devoted to the game, to the point where it was nothing for me to be gone eight weeks. I don't care if I was 100 miles from the house, I wouldn't go home. I was pounding balls, pounding balls. Coors and I were real good buddies.

Q. Back to your days working at the clubs in Texas, can you tell us about the first time you met Raymond Floyd and someone set up a match with you and him?

LEE TREVINO: Thompson was one of the greatest hustlers as you well know, and he was with some gamblers in Dallas, and Raymond Floyd at the time was living in Dallas. They knew that I was been playing around Tennyson Park and been playing well, so I went out to play Fred Hawkins on a bet. He had been beating up on the cotton farmers, won a lot of games out there, and someone called up a kid by the name in Wilson in Fort Worth, and Wilson says, "I know a guy in Dallas who can play like hell." They said, "bring him up."

So the guy gave me $300 and a round trip plane ticket, and I went out there and played Fred Hawkins. I beat him all four matches, jumped on a plane and came back home. Then the guy called me to play another guy, and I played him and I stayed. After about three months I see these gamblers that walk in my pro shop there, Horizon Hills, from Dallas, and they're saying, "hello, how you doing, driving by, going to Vegas," doing this and that. He said, "I hear there are some good money games here." I said, "The cotton guys play a lot of poker and a lot of golf." He said, "Do you think they'd bet on you if we brought a Tour pro in here?" I said, "I don't know, you'd better ask." My friend said, "bring him on, Chico."

So Raymond showed up about a week later, I'll never forget. They had a white Cadillac, Raymond had a Wilson bag that must have weighed 300 pounds. I pick it up, put it on the cart, brought it in the locker room, unpacked it for him, cleaned his shoes, and Raymond is sitting there drinking a Coke. So one of the guys comes in, Raymond says, "Do you know who I'm playing today?" I says, "You're playing me, Mr. Floyd." He said, "what do you do?" I said, "I open up the shop, mind the locker room and take care of the carts."

One of the guys said, "Raymond, let's go look at the course." He said, "I'm not going to look at the course, I'm playing the locker room attendant." So I went out and beat him pretty bad. Now he wants to play nine more holes. I said, "Mr. Floyd, I'd like to play, but I've got to put the carts up (laughter)." He said, "goddamn, now I'm playing the cart man." So I beat him again the next day.

But Raymond got even. He beat me on the back nine the third day. He eagled the last hole and I lipped it out for eagle. He said, "Adios, boys, I've got better games than this on Tour."

Q. What are your recollections of the 71 playoff in the U.S. Open where you beat Jack? I guess you threw a rubber snake at him before the playoff?

LEE TREVINO: No, it was a rubber one, it wasn't fearful. Jack was a big, mean guy. A little rubber snake isn't going to scare him. I bogeyed the first hole, he parred it. I don't know how bad I scared him. Again, he left it in the bunker on 2, left it in the bunker on 3, and then you remember on was it 9 or 10 he drove it right in front of the green and didn't get it on the green with a wedge from there.

But that's the only time that I can recall that Jack Nicklaus did not make a putt on 18. If you roll back all these tournaments that Jack has ever played in, he makes more putts on the last hole than anybody I've ever seen, and he hung it on the lip. I bogeyed 18. I had a one-shot lead going there playing in front of him, and he bogeyed 18. I hit 3-wood to the right pin high and I chipped it up five feet short out of the rough and missed it, and Jack hit 5-iron I think about 15, 18 feet short of the flag and kind of had a little undulation going down and he hung it right on the lip, and then the next day I shot 68, I think -- 68-71.

Q. You beat him by 3, right?

LEE TREVINO: I beat him by 3. The only reason I beat him there is the Golf Gods were shining on me there. If you remember, after we played four holes, we had an hour and a half delay for a rainstorm, and it got the greens wet, and then I started holding those greens because I always hit the ball extremely long, and I started hitting the greens and stopping the ball. But if you look at all the major championships that I won with the exception of the two British Opens, the four majors that I won in this country were in the mud. All of them were in the mud.

If you look, I finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th, Top 10s very few times when the courses were hard because I couldn't play hard greens. I just hit it too long. Bump-and-run courses I could play, but if you gave me a course where I had to go up in the air and the greens were hard, I was done.

That was what was so great about Jack Nicklaus, he was taught correctly. There's no surprise that he won 18 majors. I told you, if he had had a wedge game he would have won more than that because Jack Nicklaus hit the ball extremely high, so it didn't matter whether the greens were soft or hard. His golf ball was going to react exactly the same every time. He was bringing it in this way (indicating). That's why he won 18 major championships.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Mr. Trevino, thank you very much.

End of FastScripts.

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