Lee Trevino

Lee Trevino was born on December 1, 1939 in Dallas, Texas. His father, Joseph, was not a part of his life, and he was raised by his mother, Juanita, a domestic, and his maternal grandfather, Joe Trevino, a Mexican immigrant who worked as a grave digger. The family lived in a four-room house with no electricity or plumbing that was about 100 yards off the seventh fairway of Glen Lakes Country Club. As a child, Trevino watched the golfers out on the fairway, and, after finding an old club, began to practice hitting balls around his yard. At the age of eight he began working as a caddie, and played golf on three short holes behind the caddie shack.

Trevino quit school after the seventh grade and took a job at Glen Lakes as an assistant groundskeeper. On the side he would work as a caddie and play a few holes at the end of the day. Lying about his age, Trevino joined the U.S. Marines when he was seventeen and served two two-year stints in Asia and played for the Third Marine Division golf squad. By the time he was discharged in 1961, he was a good golfer, with a four-handicap, but wanted to get better. He took a job at Hardy's Driving Range and played on the rough flat terrain of the Tenison Golf Course, a municipal course in Greenville, Texas, where he worked on developing his unusual swing to perfection.

To supplement his income, Trevino began hustling golf bets. At first, he d simply wager that he'd come out ahead in a round of golf. But when his winning ways scared off most of his competition, he began taking bets that he could win using a 26-ounce Dr. Pepper bottle wrapped in adhesive tape for a club. He later boasted that he never lost with that bottle. His early experience of wagering more money than he had to lose helped Trevino develop his competitive edge and his coolness under extreme pressure later in his career. Early in his professional career, Trevino would often place offcourse bets on his performance, sometimes winning as much on his wagers as he did in prize money.