‘Dr. Dirt’ Bryant Is Cleaning Up Game

The pros call him “Dirt.” Or, sometimes, “Dr. Dirt.”

As nicknames go, it’s not exactly like being called “the Hawk,” or “the Shark,” or “the Squire” or even “Boom Boom” or “Slammin’ Sam.” But Brad Bryant lives with it. It’s better than being ignored.

He earns his nickname because he looks--well, homeless comes to mind. He looks as if he had just been fixing a car. Came away from the lube rack wiping his hands.

He got the moniker from--who else?--the puckish Gary McCord. Gary’s contribution to the golf tour has always been a kind of raffish sense of humor and a keen eye for the foibles of his fellow competitors. His heart leaped with joy when he beheld Brad Bryant on a tee.

You remember what fashion plates pro golfers used to be? Knife crease in the beltless slacks, alligator shoes, alpaca sweaters. . . . Not the balloon baggy pants and wrinkled shirts and scuffed shoes of today. A golfer wins a tournament today looking, as Alex Wolcott said Heywood Broun did, “like an unmade bed.”

Even on this casual scale, Bryant stands out. Someone once said of Gene Littler that he wondered where Gene got those pre-faded shirts. Well, Bryant makes Littler look like Beau Brummell. Bryant not only manages to look as if he had just come out from under a lube rack, he looks like the third from the left in the truck drivers’ flight at Reno Municipal.

Does the sobriquet bother Dr. Dirt? Nah. Not much bothers Brad Bryant. A 10-foot, four-break downhill putt, maybe. But, what somebody calls him? Nah.

He wonders a little about it. Can’t for the life of him understand what he does different. I mean, he takes two showers a day, brushes his teeth, combs his hair, gets his shoes shined--and still looks as if he has been out in the rain.

“I think it’s because I have this kind of dark complexion,” he says. “And scruffy beard. Looks like I haven’t washed or shaved. Of course, I’m not anybody’s ‘best-dressed.’ I’m a Wal-Mart kind of guy. But I wear what everybody else wears.”

Maybe so, but on Brad it looks rumpled. Arnold Palmer could play with his shirt hanging out, but if Dr. Dirt does it, the world is critical.

Perhaps he is doing it on purpose, living up to his reputation, not wanting to disappoint?

The tour jester McCord shakes his head. “It just looks that way,” he says. “He’s doing his best.”

There is an up-side, Bryant points out cheerfully.

“They don’t give you a nickname unless they feel you’re going to be around for a long while,” he notes brightly.

“You’ll have no trouble recognizing him,” a fellow pro told a reporter looking for Bryant one day. “He’s the one who looks as if he slept in his car overnight.”

Even on the tour for years, Brad kind of supplied the comic relief. He was what the fight game would call “strictly an opponent.” He filled the field. He never seemed to be trying to win, just hoping to make the cut.

He stayed out there for 17 years and, in 475 tournaments, he managed seven seconds and four thirds. You don’t need a nifty wardrobe for that. In fact, you can’t afford one.

He put nobody in mind of the Hawk or the Shark. He had an unusual but modern concept of the game. Most great players of the past concentrated on making their bad rounds as low as they could be under the circumstances. They would try to turn a potential 82 into a 76, for instance.

Brad shakes his head. “If you’re having a bad round on the regular tour today, you might as well let it happen,” he says. “You’re not going to make the cut anyway. What you have to try to do today is get that really low round lower.”

Turn a 67 into a 63, for instance. That’s exactly what Bryant finally did at the Walt Disney World Classic last October--shot a 63 in the second round. It was good enough to help him to his first tour victory--after nearly 500 tournaments worldwide and 475 on the U.S. tour.

He became “Sir Dirt” overnight. His was a popular victory. He struck a blow for everyone who ever looked as if he got dressed in the dark, or picked clothes more suitable for milking the cow than going to a dance.

He had also done a daring thing. He had gone to the swing guru, David Leadbetter, and overhauled his game completely. At 41, he was starting over.

It worked. Sir Dirt is not exactly the favorite at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic down here this week, but he’s one of them. He now has the game, if not the wardrobe, and shot a one-under 71 Wednesday. The Hope could be a Dirt road this year.

The self-taught son of a Baptist preacher, Bryant played the game in Alamagordo, N.M., where the winds taught him a game that may come in handy at the Hope this week.

The nickname not only doesn’t bother him, he grins and says he may capitalize on it. “The average guy whose shirt and pants don’t match, or whose jacket looks slept in, can relate to me,” he says. “We’re thinking of bringing out a line of clothes called ‘Dirt.’ ”

If he does, McCord may want a cut.

Usually, when you say a golfer is dirty, you mean he tees the ball up in the rough, cheats on marking it on the green, steps on your ball when you aren’t looking or puts the wrong score on the card.

Brad Bryant plays dirty but not that kind of dirty. He observes all the rules. But if he wins down here this week, McCord may recommend that instead of a trophy and a car, they give him a washing machine and an ironing board.