During a four-week period in 1971 Trevino won the U.S. Open, the Canadian Open and the British Open. Jeff Gross/Getty Images

Lee Trevino doesn't have a college degree but in the world of golf, he's a genius. Like the legendary Ben Hogan, Trevino found the answers in the dirt. He taught himself the game and like Hogan, created a unique swing that worked surprisingly well.

Trevino had all the necessities for being a superstar. Not only could he play more shots than anyone else, he could do it under pressure and he could do it while making wisecracks. He also has  the showman part down. His Merry Mex persona is a bit of an act, but it's the most engaging act the sport has seen in the last three decades. He's a walking, talking sound bite of golf history.

Trevino was in Dublin, Ohio, Wednesday for ceremonies at the Memorial Tournament, where he was one of this year's honorees -- a tradition Jack Nicklaus created for this event. Trevino met with some writers before he attended the ceremonies on the 18th green, and he was, as usual, a non-stop fountain of laughs, nostalgia, insight and golf expertise. Here are some of the highlights, vintage Trevino stuff:

On being the Memorial's honoree: "My wife and I were going to my little boy's baseball game a year ago.  As we're driving, I said, 'Today is Wednesday. Memorial starts tomorrow. I don't know if Jack is waiting for me to die or what but I think it's getting close to my time.' She says, 'what are you talking about?' I said, 'Jack honors a player every year on the Wednesday before the Memorial. It wouldn't surprise me if he called me sometime this year...' This is the gospel truth. We take out our chairs, set them up behind the dugout on the third-base line and I hear her cell phone ring. She answers and hands me the phone. 'It's Jack,' she says. I said, 'Jack who?' She says, 'The guy you've been talking about this afternoon.' It was a surprise and it was a pleasure. Jack always calls me Pro, never called me by my name. And I call him Pro. He said, 'Hey, Pro, we just finished the captains' dinner and you've been selected to be a nominee for '04. Can you make it?' I said, 'I'll be there with bells on.'"

On the Memorial Tournament: "It took Jack 14 years to get me back [to this place]. Once it sleeted here, that was it for me ... I loved the golf course here and I played well, I just never agreed with the weather.

On his game: "If you put me on a long, demanding golf course, I am a dead man. I couldn't play. If you put me on the right type of a Donald Ross course, I will eat your lunch every time because [that kind of venue] gave me options. If I'm in a position where I've got to hit a 2-iron or 4-wood into a green, I'm a dead man, and that's why I had problems with Augusta. I couldn't hit the ball high enough and I would not change my game to go right to left and high only for that tournament.

On Tiger Woods: "Tiger was advanced. When he was 22, 23, he was hitting shots that it takes players years and years to learn. He already knew them. Tiger had Jack's golf swing and mental capacity to map out a course and he had my work ethic, and that's a dangerous combination... Tiger set the bar and it wasn't going to take forever for these guys to reach that bar. I just read something in the paper where Ernie Els says they're getting closer to Tiger... I remember you guys wrote off Jack in 1978, '79. What did I tell you then? Don't ever wake up a bear that's hibernating because he's going to be mad. Jack came back in 1980 and won two Majors. The same thing is going to happen with Tiger. If Tiger doesn't win a Major this year, I wouldn't want to be playing against him in '05.

On Jack's semi-retirement: "What's he had, one or two hips done? I think he hurts. You have to get inside the man's body. I can tell you how I hurt. Six weeks ago, I was sitting on the asphalt at Valencia. I'm 5 under with four holes to go and I can't finish because I have such bad back spasms. So you don't know how Jack feels. He is a very intelligent person, he knows reality has set it. He knows he can't play the way he used to, but he'd love to play pain-free."

On Jack's career: "If he would have been a good wedge player, he would have won 40 majors. I'm serious, he would have won 40. He's a pretty good wedge player now. Phil Rogers has helped Jack, but in the late '60s and early '70s, he was terrible with a wedge because he never grounded the club. Wedges are hard to hit if you don't ground the club. But Jack was phenomenal out of a fairway bunker. Greatest fairway-bunker player I've ever seen.

On the Ryder Cup: "I made it famous by taking the team over to the Belfry in '85 and losing. It was getting to the point that we were so dominant, we weren't having big galleries. Then we got beat quite badly, and that's when the big interest started and the galleries grew. The Ryder Cup is big, now. When we used to play, the the PGA wase lucky if it broke even. The PGA didn't make any money. Now the Ryder Cup is big business."

On his greatest shot: "The best shot of my career was in the U.S. Open qualifier in 1967 at the Dallas Athletic Club on the 13th hole. I had driven the ball too far to the right in a little ravine and I was behind some trees. I was using an old 4-wood. I just took the biggest swing you have ever seen and the ball went over the trees, onto the green and I made the putt for eagle. I earned the fourth spot to go to Baltusrol, where I finished fifth, and that was the start of my career."

On the 1971 U.S. Open playoff with Nicklaus: "That's the only time I can recall that Nicklaus didn't make a putt on 18. If you roll back all these tournaments that Jack ever played, he made more putts on the last hole than anybody. This time, he hung it on the lip. Jack hit a 5-iron in, was about 15 or 18 feet short of the flag and hung it on the lip. The golf gods were shining on me there. After we played four holes, we had an hour-and-a-half delay because of a rainstorm. It got the greens wet and then I started holding those greens. I always hit the ball low, but I started stopping the ball on the greens. If you look at all the major championships that I won in this country, they were in the mud. I couldn't play hard greens, I just hit it too low. Bump-and-run courses, I could play, but if you gave me a course where I had to go up in the air and the greens were hard, I was done. That's why it was no surprise Jack won 18 majors. He hit the ball extremely high, so it didn't matter whether the greens were soft or hard, his ball was going to react the same way every time. That's why he won 18 majors."

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to SI.com.