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

for his dramatic displays of confidence before every match.
    Trevino’s brilliance did not end in Philadelphia. Nine days after his victory at Merion, he headed north of the border for the 1971 Canadian Open. Trevino began the final round two strokes behind former Masters champion Art Wall Jr. Playing one group ahead of Wall, Super Mex immediately made up the deficit by holing out a wedge for an eagle on the first hole. Trevino—who would score a five under 67—and Wall spent the rest of the July Fourth Independence Day battling neck and neck across Montreal’s Richelieu Valley Golf Club. With a sudden-death play-off needed to determine the winner, Trevino dropped an eighteen-foot, left-to-right sidehill putt on the first play-off hole to take his second national championship in as many weeks.
    The next day, he left Montreal for Southport, England, and Royal Birkdale, the site of the one hundredth British Open championship. Trevino probably felt more at home at Birkdale than at the aristocratic American settings of Baltusrol, Merion, and Augusta National, and not simply because he had played Birkdale so well during the Ryder Cup two years earlier. During the long week leading up to the final round, the British press educated their American associates about the intersection of golf and social class.
    In comparison to the other six British courses that rotate the Open championship, Birkdale, said one English reporter, “is the worst of the lot ... Not in terms of space, cordiality, clubhouse access, hotel rooms and the things that helped produce the record crowds, but in terms of enchantment, charm, playing quality and tradition. ‘Birkdale is what you might call nouveau riche,’ said one journalist, referring to the fact that the course only got started in 1889.’” When Arnold Palmer—the son of a greenkeeper from blue-collar America-won his first British Open title there, he fit the Birkdale profile.
    While Trevino’s transition from indigent kid to Horizon Hills upstart blended perfectly with Birkdale, his celebrity was beginning to weigh him down. A six-to-one favorite (defending champion Nicklaus was four-to-one), Trevino became slightly annoyed by catcalls from a few rude spectators who cheered when he missed putts during round two. He also grew more than “a little testy” when the curious British fans crowded him as he tried to sharpen his stroke on the practice green.
    But Trevino played through the annoyances at Birkdale, shot 70 or better each day, and won his third National Open championship in four weeks.
    “This is the most fantastic day of my life,” he told the press. “To be established as a world-class player you have to win one of the big ones staged outside the United States. I think from now on that I must be regarded as world-class.”
    Trevino was world-class, and not just on the golf course. The $13,200 check he earned pushed his winnings over $200,000 in prize money for the season, breaking Billy Casper’s all-time earnings record in 1968, with more than four months remaining in the 1971 season. How Trevino spent that money soon earned more attention than how he won it. He donated more than one-third of the paycheck ($4,800) to an orphanage in Formby, the small Merseyside town in northwest England.
    “When I win a championship of this stature, I have the feeling that the man upstairs is looking after me and I want to give something back,” Trevino said. “I wanted to do something for the kids like me who had a difficult start in life.”
    This was not the first time, nor the last, that Trevino flashed his philanthropic side. He visited sick children in hospitals and competed in numerous charity pro-ams, including several in Puerto Rico, with his outgoing Hispanic friend Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez. Trevino had also donated $5,000 of his winning paycheck from May’s Memphis Open to the local St. Jude hospital, and even handed over his entire purse from his 1969 World Cup team