Why Lee Trevino’s take on modern golf-course design is flawed

There’s rarely a dull moment when Lee Trevino takes the dais.

So it was on Tuesday at Pleasant Valley Country Club, in Little Rock, Ark., where the 85-year-old legend fielded questions from the press in advance of the Simmons Bank Championship.

In true Trevino fashion, his responses were freewheeling and wide-ranging, touching on everything from memories of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer to why he doesn’t watch many NFL games. (“Not a lot of Mexicans playing football,” he said.) 

Among the other topics he addressed: golf-course design.

Unlike Nicklaus, Palmer and other big-name players of his generation, Trevino never went all-in on the golf-architecture business. And as he readily conceded, he hasn’t seen as many courses as most of his peers.

“I got started late in life, as you well know,” Trevino said. “I was 28 years old when I started playing professional golf. The only golf course that I knew before that was Tenison Park, which was a public course in Dallas.” 

Bottom line: He didn’t take a lot of buddies’ trips.

“I’ve missed a lot,” Trevino said. “I’ve missed a lot of great courses that I’ve not played.”

But what kind of courses does he consider great?

Asked to name the finest U.S. Open venues, Trevino had high praise for the usual suspects, including Oakmont, Pebble Beach and Merion, the site of one of Trevino’s two U.S. Open wins.

Hard to argue with any of those.

The more puzzling comments came when Trevino turned to modern course design. Here, Trevino got to talking about blind shots and hidden hazards. He is not a fan, and he thinks that they’ve been created for the wrong reason: to defend against the world’s best players.

Balls

“One of the reasons that the architects in my opinion are hiding things is simply because they’re trying to make them — we’ve fallen into a place of trying to make a golf course challenging to the professional,” Trevino said. “That’s not where the backbone of this game is at. The backbone of this game is in the high-handicap, the mid-handicap, the lady player, the junior.”

He’s right about the game’s backbone. But as for modern-course design? Maybe he was thinking of the 1990s. In more recent decades, a modern-minimalist movement has given rise to pretty much the opposite of what Trevino describes. Under the influence of such designers as Bill Coore, Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and David McLay Kidd, to name just a few, the emphasis has fallen on approachability and fun.

Now, more than ever, courses are being built with the average recreational golfer in mind. Among the resulting trends is a move away from golf as high-flying aerial assault. At many of the finest modern-day designs, from Bandon Dunes to Gamble Sands and Streamsong and beyond, designers are encouraging the ground game, giving players a range of options beyond the standard Tour pro power play.

Trevino seems to see things through a different lens.

“What they’re doing is they’re starting to make golf courses to where everything is carry,” Trevino said. “You can’t roll the ball on the green anymore. There’s no such thing as a green being open in the front, you know. They’ll put that green to where it’s a boomerang type and they’ll bunker all the front and sides.”

Actually, they don’t. Not these days. But let’s not hold it against Trevino. By his own account, he doesn’t get around to a ton of courses, and even if he isn’t keeping up on the latest design trends, he understands a truth about good storytelling: You don’t always need to let the facts get in the way.