Always Ads Up for Lee

Lee Trevino, who does more commercials than Bill Cosby, recently found himself on location for another. And so did his caddie, Herman Mitchell, who, even Lee merrily admits, seems to be “becoming more popular than I am.”

Having come to the Coast for this week’s GTE West Classic senior golf event at the Ojai Valley Inn and Country Club, the comedy team of Lee and Herman spent the better part of a day at the Woodland Hills Country Club, filming an advertisement for a cellular phone.

Lee’s expecting an urgent phone call. Herman can’t find the phone in his golf bag. It has accidentally fallen out of the cart.

Some guy playing in the next group picks it up and runs after them. Herman drives recklessly and smashes into him, sending everything flying.

Lee takes the phone and says: “Hello? Oh, that was nothing. Some guy just got run over by a Caddy.”

Anybody who has ever seen one of Trevino’s advertisements or spent a few minutes in his company can already hear him laughing. Lee’s laughter begins somewhere in his belly and works its way through his diaphragm and eventually comes blasting out of his mouth like a smoke alarm. He puts his whole self into that laugh.

For that very reason, Trevino usually insists that his ads be light-hearted. He asks to see the scripts in advance.

“I am not a serious person,” he says, which is something you don’t hear every day. “I can’t do serious things.

“I look at the script and if there are words in there that I wouldn’t use in my everyday vocabulary, I can’t say them. I’d rather not be too serious about anything, unless it’s something like a ‘Say No to Drugs’ campaign, which is extremely serious. Then I’ll serious up.

“Otherwise, I’m just me. Cadillac recently asked me to do a commercial, and Cadillac is a very dignified company. But they let me do it my way. So, I said, ‘When I was younger, the only time I ever got to see a Cadillac is when I was taking the bags out of somebody’s trunk.’ ”

Lee Trevino is a happy-go-lucky guy and a lucky guy. Life did a nice little fade on him for a while, dropping a champion down into the middle of the pack, even revealing his darker side at events such as the Masters that brought out the worst in him. But then Lee learned how to play the fade and he settled down gently into soft grass.

First, along came the senior tour and its stunning popularity, which Trevino enhanced. He enjoyed a born-again career, winning tournaments right and left, feeling like a kid again at 50.

“It’s been the greatest gig of my life, the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” he says.

Professionally, that is. One of the greater things that has ever happened to Lee Trevino is sitting on his lap as he says it. Her name is Olivia and she is a little over 2 years old.

Becoming a “senior” did more than revive Trevino’s golf career. The man whose first child was born in 1962 now has an adorable infant in his hands, and she is a handful.

“I haven’t had a day off for so long and I’m dog tired, but with this one here, when she’s awake, you’re awake. I’m taking naps when she does, just to keep up with her.”

Everything is going his way. Even the tee shots that suddenly started hooking on him have returned where they belong. Trevino has always played left-to-right golf, but recently found his drives straying in the wrong direction.

Senior tour or no, it unnerved him. He says he would sit in a chair, staring off into space, trying to figure out what was wrong, having no special tutor to turn to as many golfers do.

Until finally it occurred to him that the speed of his lower body was off, that his upper torso was taking over his game. Like an electric bulb illuminating over his head, he knew that was it.

Next day, he hit his first shot perfectly, turned to his caddie and said, “Herman, they are going to have it tough from me today.”

He shot 66 and went on to win the tournament.

Lee wasn’t prepared to become somebody who played for show instead of for dough. The money didn’t matter, but the competition did. Had there been no senior tour, he might have become a museum piece, with customers pointing toward him and talking about the golfer he used to be.

Instead, they still talk about the golfer he is.

“You know and I know that some of us are washed up at 50, 47, 40, 32, whatever,” Trevino says. “You never know when your game is gone. Hey, I probably could have still made a living on the regular tour, but I’d have gotten beaten up on Mondays and Tuesdays in pro-ams, and I probably would have missed more cuts than I made.

“Just wouldn’t have been the same, baby. Wouldn’t have been the same.”