Lee Trevino, first poll Corridor of Famer
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There’s hardly ever a boring second when Lee Trevino takes the dais.
So it was on Tuesday at Nice Valley Nation Membership, in Little Rock, Ark., the place the 85-year-old legend fielded questions from the press upfront of the Simmons Financial institution Championship.
In true Trevino trend, his responses had been freewheeling and wide-ranging, relating all the things from recollections of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer to why he doesn’t watch many NFL video games. (“Not a variety of Mexicans enjoying soccer,” he stated.)
Among the many different subjects he addressed: golf-course design.
In contrast to Nicklaus, Palmer and different big-name gamers of his era, Trevino by no means branched into the golf-architecture enterprise. And as he readily conceded, he hasn’t seen as many programs as most of his friends.
“I obtained began late in life, as you effectively know,” Trevino stated. “I used to be 28 years previous after I began enjoying skilled golf. The one golf course that I knew earlier than that was Tenison Park, which was a public course in Dallas.”
Backside line: He didn’t take a variety of buddies’ journeys.
“I’ve missed rather a lot,” Trevino stated. “I’ve missed a variety of nice programs that I’ve not performed.”
However what sort of programs does he think about nice?
Requested to call the best U.S. Open venues, Trevino had excessive reward for the standard suspects, together with Oakmont, Pebble Seaside and Merion, the positioning of one in all Trevino’s two U.S. Open wins.
Onerous to argue with any of these.
The extra puzzling feedback got here when Trevino turned to trendy course design. Right here, Trevino obtained to speaking about blind pictures and hidden hazards. He isn’t a fan, and he thinks that they’ve been created for the flawed motive: to defend in opposition to the world’s finest gamers.
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“One of many causes that the architects for my part are hiding issues is just because they’re attempting to make them — we’ve fallen into a spot of attempting to make a golf course difficult to the skilled,” Trevino stated. “That’s not the place the spine of this recreation is at. The spine of this recreation is within the high-handicap, the mid-handicap, the girl participant, the junior.”
He’s proper in regards to the recreation’s spine. However as for modern-course design? Possibly he was considering of the Nineteen Nineties. In more moderen a long time, a modern-minimalist motion has given rise to just about the other of what Trevino describes. Below the affect of such designers as Invoice Coore, Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and David McLay Kidd, to call only a few, the emphasis has fallen on approachability and enjoyable.
Now, greater than ever, programs are being constructed with the common leisure golfer in thoughts. Among the many ensuing tendencies is a transfer away from golf as high-flying aerial assault. At most of the most interesting modern-day designs, from Bandon Dunes to Gamble Sands and Streamsong and past, designers are encouraging the bottom recreation, giving gamers a variety of choices past the usual Tour professional energy play.
Trevino appears to see issues by way of a distinct lens.
“What they’re doing is that they’re beginning to make golf programs to the place all the things is carry,” Trevino stated. “You’ll be able to’t roll the ball on the inexperienced anymore. There’s no such factor as a inexperienced being open within the entrance, you understand. They’ll put that inexperienced to the place it’s a boomerang sort and so they’ll bunker all of the entrance and sides.”
Truly, they don’t. Not as of late. However let’s not maintain it in opposition to Trevino. By his personal account, he doesn’t get round to a ton of programs, and even when he isn’t maintaining on the most recent design tendencies, he understands a fact about good storytelling: You don’t at all times have to let the details get in the way in which.
