Lee Trevino takes time to cool off at the 15th hole yesterday.

journal / Bob Breidenbach Bob Breidenbach

BARRINGTON — If Billy Andrade hadn’t dragged him off to Newport for last night’s CVS Caremark Charity Classic gala at Marble House, Lee Trevino might still be telling stories in the press room at Rhode Island Country Club.

And, as long as Trevino was talking, rest assured there’d be people listening.

“Make sure he’s your last customer,” said Dana Quigley, who was the first player to be interviewed after yesterday’s opening round. “If anything’s moving, he’ll talk to it.”

Brad Faxon recalled the first time he saw Trevino play.

“It was in 1981, at Merion, when I played in my first U.S. Open. I was 19. I played in the morning, and then went back out in the afternoon to watch Lee Trevino. I was standing at the 14th hole when he came walking toward the tee. He was talking while he was walking. He was talking while he was standing on the tee. He was talking while he was taking his practice swings. I thought: ‘He’s got to stop some time.’ But he kept right on talking, even while he was in his backswing.

“Can you imagine,” asked Faxon, turning to his playing partner, Masters champion Zach Johnson, “guys on Tour doing that now?”

“We’ve got some characters,” said Johnson, shaking his head, “but nobody like that.”

There is nobody in the history of golf quite like Trevino, who went from playing big-money matches in Texas — sometimes using a soda bottle, instead of a club, to hit the ball — to winning six major championships: two U.S. Opens, two British Opens, and two PGA Championships.

But never The Masters.

“I always told Jack (Nicklaus, a six-time Masters winner) that I was too short (off the tee) to play Augusta,” Trevino said yesterday. “I’d be hitting to the greens with 3- and 4-irons and he’d be hitting wedges. When they lengthened the course, he shot 83. I said to him: ‘How do you like Augusta now that you’re hitting your tee ball from where I used to?’  ”

Nicklaus had won both The Masters and the U.S. Open in 1972 when Trevino beat him in the British Open at Muirfield. It was the second straight British Open win for Trevino, who had won at Royal Birkdale the previous year.

“I’m proud of having won two U.S. Opens,” Trevino said, “but I loved the British Open.”

The British loved his outgoing personality — at St. Andrews in 1970, he was introduced to Prime Minister Edward Heath and smilingly asked: “Ever shake hands with a Mexican?” — and his outrageous talent. When he won at Muirfield, he chipped in four times from off the green.

“The British Open was my cup of tea,” he said. “The colder and windier it got, the better I liked it. The worse the weather, the more clothes I’d put on, and the lower I’d hit the ball. When the guys who hit high put all those clothes on, they couldn’t swing. I played one round wearing a coat like Colombo’s and hit the ball great.”

Billy Andrade, who is Trevino’s playing partner in the CVS, said it was great to have him in the tournament.

“What I love,” Andrade said, “is seeing him in his element. This is what he was born to do — play golf and talk to everybody out there.”

“It’s not hard to enjoy yourself,” Trevino said, “playing in something like this.”

Trevino then began to talk about how the game is becoming too hard, and too expensive, for people to enjoy.

“Since 2000, the number of rounds of golf played in this country has declined,” he said, adding that more golf courses are now being bulldozed annually than built.

“The courses they are building,” he continued, “are too difficult and too expensive to play. The blue-collar guy is getting to the point where he can’t afford to play. And the courses are too punishing. If you play a course where you lose two dozen balls, do you think you’re going to want to play it again?

“This course is a jewel. I love it. I’m having a ball. I can’t wait to play (today.) This is the kind of course where, after you’ve played, you have a glass of tea and a sandwich and, if there’s still daylight, you go out and play some more.”

A course that isn’t that kind, in Trevino’s opinion, is Kiawah.

“I played there last year in the U.S. Senior Open,” he said, “and I couldn’t believe that course. I begged them to take roll call at the end of every day because I was afraid some of the guys would still be lost in those bunkers.”

Trevino remembers well — though not fondly — the greens at Oakmont, where the U.S. Open was played last weekend.

“They’re the fastest greens I’ve ever been on,” he said. “Sam Snead said: ‘To putt these greens, you have to hover the putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow.’ ”

Trevino was still talking as Andrade led him from the room.

Asked about a rubber snake he’d once pulled out of his golf bag to frighten Nicklaus on the first tee, Trevino said, over his shoulder as he walked away: “One of my ex-wives has that now. I think it was the second one. I really can’t remember.”

Trevino remains unforgettable — whether he’s playing, or talking.

jdonald@projo.com