Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont by Adam Lazarus

play in the Westchester Classic in 1970, he was invited to appear on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, which still taped in New York City. Though he often told reporters he was not a hard drinker, he downed more than a few Scotches at a nearby bar before heading to the green room at NBC Studios. Once there, for the first time in his life, he drank cognac ... a lot of cognac. To the dismay of the usually unflappable Carson, an inebriated Trevino wandered onstage before the live studio audience.
    “I was stumbling, falling-down drunk on national television,” Trevino remembered. “Elaine Stritch, the actress, was on the show with me and she didn’t have one of her all-time-great performances either. She got off on me pretty good, saying she liked little Mexican guys because they made wonderful elevator operators. To show her she couldn’t outwit me, I propositioned her before millions of people.”
    Afterward, an embarrassed Trevino headed south on the New Jersey Turnpike to get as far away as possible from Westchester, finally stopping at a hotel when he could stay awake no longer. He missed his opening tee time Thursday morning; the press simply reported that he overslept. Recognizing that her husband was burned out and possibly on the verge of a breakdown, Claudia scheduled an immediate vacation for them in Acapulco.
    Though the Tonight Show debacle was the closest Trevino ever came to “crashing and burning,” his heavy drinking continued without interruption during the early 1970s and became, by his own admission, a way of life. Having five Scotches during a rain delay at the tail end of a round in the Atlanta Golf Classic was typical of his professional conduct, as was showing up to a tournament hungover or still drunk.
    Whether he was sober or not, the most remarkable feature of Lee Trevino, Class A professional golfer, was that his exceptionally steady game rarely suffered from his off-the-course implosions. He struggled in the second half of the 1969 season due to a knee injury and was unable to win after January. But in 1970, he received the Vardon Trophy for the lowest stroke average on tour, and in 1971, he recorded one of the finest seasons in the history of modern golf.
    Trevino started the 1971 season slowly, dropping out of three early-season tournaments (another increasingly common feature of his whirlwind personal life). But he won two spring tournaments and posted three runner-up and three additional top-five finishes in a ninety-day stretch. Heading into the seventy-first U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club outside Philadelphia, Trevino—with $135,110.10—ranked second only to Nicklaus in earnings.
    At Merion, where Bobby Jones clinched the Grand Slam in 1930, Trevino was as consistent as he had been three years earlier at Oak Hill. Had it not been for an ugly triple bogey at the sixth hole on Friday, the “Happy Hombre” would have again fired par or better in all four rounds of a U.S. Open. Trevino and Nicklaus finished in a tie after seventy-two holes, but Trevino stared down Nicklaus in a Monday-afternoon, eighteen-hole play-off to decide the championship. Trevino saved his best for last, cruising through Merion’s back nine to shoot a 68 and a three-stroke victory in one of the most memorable U.S. Opens in history.
    “Yes, this one is more rewarding,” he told the press. “Someone, Mr. Walter Hagen, I think, once said that anyone can win the Open once, but only a great player can win it twice.”
    It was fitting that Trevino would show such reverence for Hagen. Half a century earlier, Hagen, also a two-time U.S. Open champion, had boldly challenged the sharp line of class distinction at elite, private country clubs in both the United States and Great Britain. He, too, enjoyed an excessive lifestyle that didn’t seem to faze his game. And Trevino, who earlier in his career had relied on mind games to gain an edge in high-stakes gambling matches, complimented Hagen as “a helluva psych artist”