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Bland camp Personalities not a strong suit of Toms, Duval, Goosen
Updated: Wednesday August 22, 2001 4:26 AM
A victory for David Toms at the PGA Championship may have been a tonic for the journeymen players of professional golf, but as he lifted his first major trophy at the Atlanta Athletic Club at the ripe old age of 34, I couldn't help but wonder what the various money men associated with the game were thinking. Let me elaborate. In a year when the hyperbole surrounding Tiger Woods has proven to be as accurate as a Seve Ballesteros driver, the big money sponsors needed another unassuming underdog to win one of the big prizes like Woosie needed a 15th club at the British Open. In short, they didn't. Tiger apart, the three men who'll join him in November's Grand Slam of Golf in Hawaii are as big a draw as Fuzzy Zoeller at an NAACP luncheon. Nothing personal against this trio of champions you understand. They're good golfers who've let their clubs do the talking on the course at the highest level. But in front of the microphones in the aftermath of victory they've had all the personality of a 3-wood.
Talk about masters of understatement. Close your eyes and forget the accents and you couldn't tell whether it was U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen, British Open winner David Duval or the man of the moment, Toms, giving you the "I just played one hole at a time" type quote to explain their triumphs. Now of course everyone can't be Robin Williams or Bill Clinton when it comes to providing snappy sound bites. They're golfers after all, not comedians or politicians. But the kind of person who inspires the average Joe to spend money on a product associated with the game is not the regular guy who reacts to even the defining victories of his career with equanimity, but the man who conveys a bit of passion, charisma, maybe even arrogance. Just something to show he's alive. With that in mind, I couldn't help but sympathize with the sponsors, who, in the absence of Tiger, would surely have gotten more bang for their buck had Phil Mickelson or Japanese sensation Shingo Katayama lifted their first majors instead of nice but dull Toms. Terry Baddoo is co-host of World Sport, the international sports show that airs live on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN International.
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