I was mentally prepared, if not physically, to play my first Lee Trevino designed golf course last week. Trevino presented quite a quandary for me as a young developing golfer in the 1960s and ‘70s. He was easily my favorite on tour, after “Champagne” Tony Lema died in an airplane crash (on a golf course). But Trevino’s stroke was flat, almost a baseball swing and geared to a certain body type with which I was unfamiliar; I stood 5 feet 11 inches and weighed between 115 and 120 until a year after I was graduated from college. Thin would have been an improvement. Trevino, of course, was built like a fireplug, and strong. He does not get anywhere near the credit he deserves as a competitive golfer, lost in the accolades for the more stable personalities of Palmer and Nicklaus. Trevino could be a bit of a crass showman, but boy could he play. And golf needed someone to take the game less seriously than it seemed to take itself. The Merry Mex was the right agent of levity.
Most shots over trouble at Ironwood are easily made, and women and retirees will find the course a pleasure to play.
I thought the Trevino-designed course at Ironwood Golf and Country Club in Greenville, NC, was going to feature mostly left to right doglegs to mimic Trevino’s standard ball flight throughout his career. (You may recall that he stopped playing the Masters event because it required too many right to left shots.) But Trevino, who often could not put a governor on his actions or mouth when he was playing the tour, apparently can show great restraint when he designs a golf course. Ironwood, surprise of surprises, was “normal,” and it was in excellent condition, a lot of fun and surrounded by one of the nicest neighborhoods in the Greenville area. This is not a retirement community by a long shot, but retirees comfortable being around families and junior golfers will find some stately medium to large sized homes, many brick-faced, beside the fairways. (Single-family homes of nearly 3,000 square feet start around $350,000.)
The doglegs at Ironwood are mostly right to left shots, the opposite of designer Lee Trevino's ball flight when he was one of the best golfers in the world.
Any left to right holes at Ironwood are gentle bends; the only severe doglegs – the par 5 13th and the par 4 18th, as well as the second and third shots on the par 5 7th – are right to left shots with angles that would be at home at Augusta National, Trevino’s nemesis. You get the impression that someone else at the Wm. Graves Golf Course Design Company, with which Trevino was affiliated, might have laid out the course. This course is not particularly suited to Trevino's game, but more credit to him for restraint, something Jack Nicklaus could not resist with his earliest designs that put a premium on high left to right shots.
