Mr. Sherman Meet Mr. Trevino

Courtesy: NY Post

Richard Sherman is a cause célèbre. His outstanding play at game’s end cemented the Seahawk’s entry into this year’s Super Bowl. Lee Trevino is exceptional, too, winner of nearly thirty golf tournaments including six Major Championships—The Open, U.S. Open, and PGA Championship, two each, from 1968-1984.

The meeting between them isn’t likely to happen. And why would it? These men are two generations apart and played different sports:  one team-based and bellicose (football), the other solitary and genteel (golf). Personality and style?  Sherman talks loquaciously about how good he is, that trait becoming a matter of national attention because of his postgame interview at the NFC Championship game. Trevino, on the other hand, is a model of public relations. Forever jovial and engaged he often cracked jokes with the public during wait times on the tee. Lee carries the title “Merry Mex” for good reason.

Unlike Sherman, Trevino never experienced widespread criticism—let alone public outcry—for his sporting behavior.

Courtesy: Golf.com

It would be irresistibly easy to conclude that Sherman could learn a lot from Trevino’s “old school style.”  Perhaps he could, but there’s another dimension to explore in this comparison, and it’s one of similarity amid difference.

When you look at certain aspects of their respective backgrounds, it’s amazing these men became champions of anything, let alone in athletics. But it all makes sense when you analyze how each looks at self; what each believes it takes to excel; and how each applied those beliefs systematically to achieve success.

And new research suggests that this way of being in the world isn’t unique to Sherman and Trevino or even athletes in general: it helps explain broader dynamics in society. That larger profile is taken up by Yale professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld in their forthcoming book, THE TRIPLE PACKAGE, a summary of which was featured recently in THE NEW YORK TIMES.

The researchers’ conclusions come from studying the upward mobility of minority groups. They found a pattern—over time and across groups—that they call “the Triple Package of traits.”

The first trait is a strong sense of self-confidence in one’s ability to excel, a “… deep seated belief in… exceptionality.” The second trait is anxiety …”a feeling that you or what you’ve done is not good enough.”  The third trait is the ability to manage one’s impulses, “to stick with the plan,” the discipline required to succeed.

Two of the traits—superiority and insecurity—seem offsetting, but the authors believe the combo “generates the drive” to achieve. And the three traits need to be expressed as a package: each expressed alone can have dysfunctional consequences. “Only in combination do these qualities generate …’the longing to rise,’” they write.

In a word, it’s about “grit,” also understood as determination, perseverance, resolve, willpower, purpose, dedication, tenacity, and fortitude. It adds up as The Holy Grail of Success.

Consider Lee Trevino through this filter.

Lee Trevino, a Mexican-American, grew up in Dallas in a one-parent family, raised by his mother and grandfather. He began working early in life—in the cotton fields, well before he was ten—in favor of attending school full-time. Lee was finished with school by the time he was fifteen.

As a boy he began hanging around a local golf club—sneaking on the course to play—later working there as a caddie and shoeshine boy. It was a prelude to a golf career, which began after he was discharged from the Marine Corps at age 21.

Trevino taught himself golf. He never had a coach or took lessons; tutoring didn’t come from a family member; and there weren’t prominent Mexican-American golfers to emulate or with whom to network.

Trevino couldn’t afford to build his resume by playing in amateur events so he earned a golf reputation another way: by beating the competition in wager games. These were head-to-head matches set up by gamblers who would almost always bet on Lee.

During a recent interview on FEHERTY LIFE (The Golf Channel) Trevino described an especially important match—a weekend series with Raymond Floyd, a pro golfer by then, who would go on to win four major titles on the pro tour. Floyd didn’t know Trevino, a no-name at that point; and Trevino wasn’t familiar with Floyd and his game. This was a blind match.

Trevino, the club professional in those days at a lower-tier course in El Paso, did just about everything else at the place. When Floyd arrived at the course Trevino was in the clubhouse tending to clubhouse attendant tasks. Floyd was supposed to take a look-see at a course he had never played, but passed when he learned that Trevino, presumably “the clubhouse boy,” would be the opposition.

Courtesy: Golf.com

Trevino proceeded to beat Floyd two of three days, losing the last match when Floyd holed a birdie putt on the 18th hole.

A few years later, in 1966 at age 26, Trevino qualified for the U.S. Open, made the cut, and finished 54th. It was fitting start—playing in an open-access tournament—for Trevino to begin his ascendency to golf immortality.

Today, Trevino talks expressively and specifically about what it takes to succeed. Believe in self, never take anything for granted, give maximum effort, devote time, and—most importantly—work hard. Trevino believes it’s possible to be anything you want to be IF you work hard and put in the time. How else, he contends, would a Mexican-American kid from poverty achieve would he did…and in golf, no less?

Grit, it seems, carries Lee Trevino’s face. It’s a happy face, too, upbeat and smiling. But it’s not Richard Sherman’s face—the scowling, growling face—the viewing public saw during his post-game bombast at the NFC Championship game. However, if it were not for that interview—and the visceral reactions to it—the nation probably wouldn’t be learning more about Sherman and his life. A great example is the treatment offered in an article written recently by Ben Shpigel and published in THE NEW YORK TIMES (January 27).

Sherman was reared in Compton, CA, a working-class city, and a tough place to grow up. Sherman’s dad, Kevin, had personal experience with tough environments, having survived a drive-by shooting as a youth in south-central LA. That episode figured into the way he and his wife, Beverly, raised their kids—though strict discipline.

“Sherman’s parents established rules that dared not be crossed,” Shpigel writes: dress in neutral colors (to avoid affiliation with any local gang); no hanging out; no poor grades; and no backtalk. Transgressions would be handled quickly and often publicly in front of friends.

Parental discipline created a safe zone for the Sherman kids to survive and mature. For Richard, it enabled intensity and capability to flourish. He challenged himself constantly to succeed.  Sherman “cared so much about maximizing his performance,” Shpigel relates, “that he had little tolerance for underachievers.” He was also drawn to outspoken athletes—folks like Ali, Irvin, and Sanders—and he sought to imitate their style.

Sherman sought excellence in academics, too. A high achiever in high school he matriculated as a scholarship athlete at Stanford, first as a receiver and later as a defensive back. He had to prove himself at both positions, especially at DB, when he asked coaches to shift him to defense after the team’s offensive scheme changed. So Sherman went from leading the Cardinal in receiving as a freshman to starting game-after-game at DB during his last two years. To do that, he had to move up the DB position chart, from last to first.

Despite experiencing collegiate success, over thirty DBs were selected in The NFL Draft before Sherman’s name was called. A master of recall, Sherman knows all of them by name, Shpigel writes. Today, many of those players are no longer in The League. Sherman, on the other hand, has excelled: he has gathered twenty interceptions since 2011, which leads the NFL during that time.

As with Trevino, who stresses the importance of hard work over time, there’s also “a secret” to Sherman’s excellence: visualization. He believes that destiny is the outcome of imagining it. Brother Branton puts it this way: “Whatever he wants, whatever he needs—if he envisions it happening, it will.”

These two—Trevino and Sherman—are living testimony to “what it takes.” Different sports, of different generations, temperaments, and focal points…but the outcome is the same. And they aren’t alone.

Chua and Rubenfield believe the success traits aren’t reserved genetically for some people and not for others, although predisposition is undeniable. The traits are within everybody’s grasp because they can be taught and reinforced—not just by family members and in school, but also by mentors and coaches, even friends—by an array of significant others.

If taught, then the traits can be learned and applied. That may be the most important take-away message—for individuals and for society. The stark reality is that we need grit from as many people as possible and in every walk of life.

It makes a society great, a conclusion not lost on Chua and Rubenfeld. They authors believe that success traits were well exhibited in Colonial times. Early America, they assert, had “an outsize belief in its own exceptionality, a goading desire to prove itself to aristocratic Europe, and a Puritan inheritance of impulse control.”

Here we are—almost 250 years later—needing more of the same….

This column is dedicated to my late uncle, John Castronova, who exemplified “the three traits” discussed in this article, using them to become a successful Italian-American restaurateur beginning in the 1950s.  John was my male role model and he helped instilled those traits in me.

After retiring from restauranting he became an avid golfer. John was a student of the game, a self-taught player, just like Lee. His swing was like Lee’s, too, a product of trying to keep the ball straight and protecting a fragile back.

John played into his 80s, through multiple back operations, until his body said “No More!” Along the way he passed along the love of the game to my son and me.

This one’s for you, John.