GOLF / RICH TOSCHES : Straight-Shooter Berganio Shows a Refreshing Colorful Side

A story last week about Dave Berganio Jr. of Sylmar, who rode a fiery personality across the breathtaking Monterey Peninsula and into the championship match of the 81st California amateur golf tournament at Pebble Beach, has brought waves of reaction from Berganio’s friends and relatives as well as former coaches and teachers at Mission College.

One telephone call came from Berganio himself.

“The story made me look like a jerk,” he said.

The story chronicled Berganio’s rise from modest beginnings in a sport ruled by the types who frequent posh country clubs. It told of Berganio’s personality on a golf course and compared it to the typical championship-caliber player of today--the sandy-haired, $85 golf-shirt types who dominate the sport, but make it mindlessly dull.

By his own admission, Berganio is a volcano on the course.

“I know I have an attitude out there,” he said. “I have a temper. Sometimes I can’t control myself. Sometimes I beat my bag with a club after a bad shot. I know I’ve got to stop that. But it’s been hard for me to do.”

Because of that attitude, Berganio was denied a berth on the 1991 U.S. Walker Cup team, the highest honor an amateur golfer in this country can achieve. Despite winning the prestigious U.S. Public Links championship and the equally prestigious Pacific Coast Amateur championship--a tournament he won in a rout, shooting a numbing eight-under 64 in one round--Berganio was declared the 11th man on that Walker Cup team, the alternate. He did not play.

“There’s no question at all why he didn’t make the team. It was his attitude,” a veteran official of the Southern California Golf Assn said. “The U.S. Golf Assn. was petrified of this kid. They didn’t know what he might do or say on a golf course. He makes them very nervous.”

Berganio knows this too. He also makes no apologies.

“I react to things the way regular people do,” he said. “When I make a terrible shot, I get mad. I don’t know any other way. And I say what I think. When the USGA guys at the Public Links tournament warned me about playing too slowly, about taking 52 seconds to hit a shot instead of 45 seconds, I told them to get lost.”

Berganio does things like that.

He also lets a foul word escape his mouth now and then during a round of golf. And he’ll bang a club on a bag or a sprinkler every so often too.

Like Craig Stadler.

Like Seve Ballesteros.

Like Arnold Palmer once did.

You’ve heard of those guys, right?

What Berganio does not do is act like Blaine McCallister or Jeff Sluman or Jim McGovern or Bruce Fleisher or Brian Claar.

Who?

Those men each won more than $25,000 Sunday in the PGA’s weekly tournament.

Who cares?

Berganio and his human-nature approach to the stuffiest game in the world should be embraced. OK, someone tell the guy to tone it down just a bit, to make the harsh words slightly less harsh and to make the clubs bang a little more softly.

But please don’t tell Berganio to stop being Berganio. If you want that, go watch McCallister or Sluman or McGovern or any of the other 100 colorless clones firing two-irons dead at the pins every weekend on TV.

And just try to stay awake.

If Berganio, who plans to complete his senior year at Arizona--both athletically and academically--in 1993 before taking a whack at the PGA tour, can lure even a handful of kids from the same background as his into the game of golf, he has been a roaring success.

If he can show just one that to become a top-level golfer in this country, one doesn’t have to grow up in a sprawling home where a complete stranger comes in to wash your dishes and vacuum your carpets, then let’s hear some noise for Berganio.

Perhaps the sound of a golf shoe striking a golf-ball washer would be nice.

Seniors: Skip Whittet, head pro at the Ojai Valley Country Club, is competing this week in the U.S. Senior Open qualifying finals at the Saucon Valley Country Club in Bethlehem, Pa.

Whittet made it through local qualifying last week. His round of 73 at the Mesa Verde Country Club left him in a five-way tie for one of the five berths from a field of 109 golfers.

He earned a berth in this week’s final with a par on the first hole of the playoff.

The rise of Duffy: Duffy Waldorf of Tarzana, who played for years in more bad places than a humorless comic in his bid to get a real chance at the PGA tour, is making big noise.

With his tie for third in last week’s $1.1 million Western Open, Waldorf earned $52,800, vaulting to the No. 13 spot on the 1992 earnings list with $432,327.