Lee Trevino is 82 now, and even one of his biggest fans admitted that “it’s not what it used to be.” Still, when “it” was what it once was, and you know that “it” may very well leave your body one day but never your head, you and your 12-year-old son track down your favorite teacher at the end of the range and watch, listen and oftentimes laugh.
And there Tiger and Charlie Woods stood, for a good 15 minutes, before struggling to go.
“He wasn’t really giving a lesson to Charlie. He was just talking, like he does,” the 15-time major winner said of his and his son’s range time with Trevino late last month at the PNC Championship. “I got a chance to be around Lee quite a bit early in my career, and to see the quality of strike, the guy is 82 years old — come on, it’s not what it used to be, but he finds the middle of the face each and every time. I don’t care how old you are. The audio, he still has the audio, and he still has the shape of shots. Just doesn’t go as far, but no one has control of that golf ball as well as he has.
Tiger, Charlie Woods get lesson from Lee Trevino. Here’s one of the legend’s best tips.
“The old Balata ball into the wind and the shots that he played and how he did it, hardpan in Texas, and it transferred to pretty much everywhere around the world; people would just sit there and listen. Just listen — you guys know, you walk the range, and you know guys how to hit a golf ball. Lee was that guy.”
And still is. Shortly after the session after the Friday pro-am of the PNC, the Champions Tour captured and shared about two minutes of the back-and-forth, and in it, Trevino dished on the shot that causes him the most fear — “a 50-yard shot with the pin on the right, with water, with water, with water right there” — and how to hit it. Last week, the Tour put out a second video, and the one-minute, three-second clip is well worth a watch below.
In this video, Trevino shared the benefits of lowering your hands on the club. With Tiger and Charlie a few yards behind him, Trevino rolled out a ball, took one of the elder Woods’ wedges and demonstrated.
“See, with this wedge here, if you wanted to hit this little wedge to that target, so you put your hands down here and so you can make it curl like that,” Trevino said. “And the reason, when your hands are down here and you pull ’em up, you got the angle.”
He then took one of his own hybrids, rolled out another ball and swung again.
“It’s just like this with my hybrid,” Trevino said. “Sometimes I get to a point where I can’t hit an iron very good anymore, Tiger. You know, I don’t have enough speed, so sometimes I get 175 and I need to go in there this way, all I have to do is lower the hands here and just a — there you go. And put it right in there. I don’t even have to swing hard, and I don’t have to hold ’cause with the hands there, they’ll come up and you have the angle.”
On and on it went. But at this point in the video, Trevino noticed that his audience included more than just Tiger and Charlie.
“And I’m going to pass the hat, goddammit, for lessons,” he cracked.
“He’s the best. He’s the best ever,” Tiger said.
