Recalling Trevino and US Open

It was in 1968 that Quinn, a fourth-year caddie at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., got the luckiest draw in a 170-man lottery to work in the 68th national golf championship. Quinn was one of 150 locals chosen to carry for golf's greatest in one of the four PGA Tour events in which tour caddies weren't allowed. But you were at the mercy of a guy pulling names out of a hat as far as how much you might earn and what memories you might leave with that week.

Quinn left Oak Hill with bags full of both. "They had a ranking system, and I was the No. 1 rated caddie my senior year in high school," said Quinn, 61, now in his 24th year as manager of Apricots Restaurant and Pub in Farmington. "Then I went off to college (Cornell) and applied to caddie in the U.S. Open."

Quinn was accepted and drew ... Lee Trevino. "It was pot luck," Quinn said, "and very good luck."

Good luck indeed. When Sunday rolled around, Quinn was helping talk Trevino into setting a U.S. Open record of four rounds in the 60s and beating runner-up Jack Nicklaus by four strokes for his first victory in his first full year on the PGA Tour. "Pretty good, huh," Quinn said in one of the all-time understatements.

The Quinn-Trevino saga started slowly, with the usually Merry Mex anything but, though it didn't surprise the then 18-year-old youngster. "You can imagine a guy on the pro tour having to pick up a kid who doesn't know anything about him," recalled Quinn, who lives in Simsbury. "I was actually working the graveyard shift that week at Eastman Kodak Company, so every night I would go to work at 11, work until 7 and then go caddie in the U.S. Open."   So how was that possible? "When you're 18 years old and caddying in the U.S. Open, you've got a lot of adrenaline," Quinn said rather matter-of-factly.

But for the first nine holes, the normally talkative Trevino didn't say a word to Quinn, who just went about his business of tending the pins, raking bunkers correctly and making sure Trevino's bag was far enough away from his ball so nothing could happen in case the bag fell.

"I did all the things you're supposed to do as a caddie that could cost the player strokes," Quinn said. "Then on the back nine, he started asking me questions about distance and break on putts. He realized at the end of the first day that I had a pretty good working knowledge of the golf course and started asking me more and more questions."

Trevino shot even par in each of four practice rounds with Lee Elder, Doug Sanders and Gary Player. But in the first round of the tournament, Trevino shot 1-under-par 69, and Quinn thanked his boss for making him money. "I bet that he would break par, and when I told him, he asked what the odds were," Quinn said. "When I said even par, he said I was crazy."   

Before the second round, Trevino asked if Quinn had got another bet, which he had, and went and shot 68. "It was probably the worst round he played, but he scrambled just unbelievably," Quinn said.

Trevino shot 69 in the third round and then came to the 18th hole the last round needing a birdie to break Jack Nicklaus' 72-hole total of 5 under par and a par to become the first player in U.S. Open history to shoot four rounds in the 60s. With a four-stroke lead over Nicklaus, Trevino asked Quinn what he should do. "I said, 'You've got to go for the record,' " Quinn recalled.

Trevino, normally a fader, then swung too hard and hit a duck-hook into the rough. He then took out an iron to pitch the ball back into the fairway, but Quinn said, "What are you doing pro? He said he was just going to knock it out, but he was so far left that he could actually get his club on the ball, though the rough was still pretty heavy. He said, 'You know, you're right. I don't want to be known as the U.S. Open champ that lays up on the 18th hole.' "   

Trevino took a 3-iron and duck-hooked his approach into a valley in front of the green about 40 yards from the pin. Trevino then hit a blind pitch to the elevated green to 5 feet, and after climbing the hill to the green, stood arm-in-arm with Quinn in a picture that ran in Sports Illustrated.

Trevino was wearing a red shirt that Tiger Woods now wears in the final round when he's able to play. "Lee made it famous because he said if I cut my throat in the final round I don't want people to see me bleed," Quinn said with a chuckle.

So what did Trevino say to Quinn as he waited to try to make history? "Instead of saying if I sink this putt to become the U.S. Open champ, he said, 'Kevin, if I sink this putt, you clean out everybody' because I had made another bet about him breaking par," Quinn said. "He makes it to tie Nicklaus and set the record, but that was Trevino's mentality. Nicklaus became a good friend of his, and (Tom) Watson said he was a guy who thrived under the pressure. He LOVED to be in that situation. If he was in contention, boy was he tenacious. He just felt better about life. He was unafraid to win. And in that situation he proved it because he had never won a (tour) tournament. He was able to think like that and be Lee Trevino."

But Trevino admitted he achieved the win and record largely because of the guy toting his bag. "As the tournament went on, he kept getting interviewed and saying, 'We hit this or we hit that' because we literally did talk about every hole or every shot," Quinn said. "But the thing about being a good caddie is you're more or less reminding him of the obvious: the wind, the approach to the green is better from the left side of if you go over the green you're in big trouble. Then when he selects a club, he may ask what I think, but you more or less just give him the confidence that he has the right club in his hand."

But what made this tournament different from today's events is there were no yardage books or pin placement sheets, so players and caddies needed to know the course. Quinn's brother, Terry, was an all-city miler, so each morning he would run the course and pass along the pin placements, giving Trevino a decided advantage over the remainder of the field.

After the championship was over, Quinn and his brother and father, Donald, were "flipping out" while celebrating with a beer when someone from the press tent approached and said Kevin was wanted in the press room. "I said, 'Man, this is great,' because in those days, if a caddie walked in the shadow of a member they were told to walk in another direction," Quinn said. "They had different entrances for us, so to go over and see him interviewed, I thought, 'Wow.' "

When Quinn walked into the press tent, he got a triple "Wow."

"I saw Trevino up on the dais, and there was an ovation going on that turned into a standing ovation, so I thought the press must have really liked that he had won," Quinn said. "Then someone directs me up to sit next to him, and he had just told everyone that he couldn't have won the tournament without me. He said, 'Sometimes I didn't know who was the pro and who was the caddie,' which was later quoted in the New York Times and every other publication. He made me a very special character and made me feel very special."

Trevino won $30,000, which is about 50th place these days, and Quinn received $2,000, plus a special $100 "bonus."

"He kept offering me money every day, but I said we could square up at the end of the week," Quinn said. "You never believe the guy that you're caddying for is going to win, though you root so hard that you semi-believe it's going to happen. On Saturday night, he asked me if I was working (at Eastman Kodak) because he couldn't believe I was doing that, and I told him no. So he gave me $100 and told me to go out with my friends and get drunk.

"I went to a local bar where a lot of my friends hung out - a lot of us were back from college --and we spent that $100. And the first thing (Trevino) asked me in the morning was, 'Did you go out and get drunk with your friends?' I said, 'Well, yes I did.' "

A few days later, Trevino was playing in an exhibition at a nearby club with Fairfield native and Hall of Famer Julius Boros and future Greater Hartford Open champions Elder and Bob Murphy and asked Quinn to caddie for him again for $500. Later that year, Quinn met Trevino and a group called "Lee's Flea's" from Stamford who were big Trevino fans and acknowledged his U.S. Open victory before the tour event at Westchester Country Club in suburban New York.

Quinn said there were "a million stories" from U.S. Open week that he and Trevino share every few years they get together. The last time was just before Travelers took over as title sponsor of the PGA Tour's annual stop in Connecticut in 2008 when Trevino was doing a charity outing with ESPN's Chris Berman for The First Tee of Connecticut.

Long before that, Trevino befriended many of the members at Wethersfield Country Club, which hosted the Insurance City Open/GHO from 1952 to 1983. The 1972 champion was Trevino, who beat Elder in a playoff and later married Claudia Bove, who sold lemonade outside her house near the course. That same year, Quinn moved to Hartford to manage The Last National Bank restaurant in Hartford and later worked at Lewis Street before traveling the country for TGIF and then moving back to the area to work for Cavey's in Manchester and now Apricots.

Nowadays, Quinn celebrates Father's Day, which arrives again on Sunday, by watching all 18 holes of the tournament that he still considers "The Open" on TV. "Of course when you have a memory of being inside the ropes like I did, it doesn't get any better than that," Quinn said. "It was such a special moment. It was my Andy Warhol moment. When you're on a bag and you're with a guy who's the U.S. Open champ, it's so engrained in your memory. I can tell you a million stories with 100 percent recollection of what he hit, where he hit it, when he hit it, and that's 43 years ago."

Quinn has often shared those tales with his sons, Ryan and Sean, who enjoyed their own special Trevino moments when he last played in Connecticut in 2001 as the past champions competed in a special event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the state's largest sporting event. Trevino and Arnold Palmer were 1 and 1A off the first tee, so Quinn and his sons had to wait until between the third and fourth holes before they could get close to Trevino, who was signing autographs as he did all day.

"I yelled out, 'Oak Hill '68,' " Quinn recalled. "He goes, 'I was there.' He still had his back to me signing autographs, and I went, 'I was with you.' He goes, 'Who are you?' I go, 'Kevin Quinn.' He goes, 'Never heard of you,' and then turns around with a big smile on his face and starts walking toward me. Halfway there, he points to me and says, 'You still at Apricots.' I go, 'Yeah,' and he turns to the crowd and says, 'Best swordfish I ever had in my life.' "   

Trevino then approached Quinn, who introduced the Merry Mex to his sons. Trevino was changing balls on one hole, and Ryan got one that was autographed. Trevino then shouted to Sean that he'd get one on the next changeover. Sure enough, Sean also got a ball as dad continued to walk with Claudia Trevino, who was asking about colleges in New England for their daughter because they were going on a school tour later in the week.

"He was very, very nice to the kids," Quinn said. "Lee has had an up-and-down career, even a nasty period that he admitted when he kind of got taken by some guys in El Paso. He knew that, but he became an even better person after that. He's definitely a good guy."

One that Kevin Quinn fondly remembers every U.S. Open and Father's Day.