SPORT'S amazing capacity to astound was never more sharply illustrated than when the curtain came down on the 50th Volvo PGA Championship.

Out of not just left-field, but any conceivable field at all, the winner of one of the flagship events in the European Golf Tour calendar emerged as Scott Drummond, a Scots-born Shropshire lad. Prior to his appearance in the prestigious event, which attracted some of the game's star performers, the 30-year-old had never collected a cheque above £8,500 from winning a tour event.

Drummond entered the Wentworth arena ranked a less than lowly 435th in the world and even though he was handily placed after three rounds, no-one ever expected he would figure high on the final leader-board.

But in one of the most endearing of sports stories so far this year Drummond leapt right out of the pack to become the first man to have won the PGA pot at his first attempt since the legendary Arnold Palmer nearly 30 years earlier. He equalled the tournament record of 19-under-par and in so doing not only saw off his closest challenger by two strokes, but the dreadnought Drummond also helped himself to a winner's cheque of £420,000 - more than 40 times his previous Tour earnings.

No surprise then for the victor to exclaim: "It's a dream come true. It was surreal."

Too right it was. But what it also represented was another example of how sport can transform the modest into the magical, can excite, enthral and energise the paying public all at one time, and can gladden the heart of even the most cynical watcher.

Drummond's success was further illuminating in displaying how glittering prizes are not always the preserve of a well-heeled elite.

There's still ample room for the 'little guy', there's still a chance for the outsider, there's still a chance of a bolt out of the blue.

Indeed, Drummond was priced at 500-1 by the bookmakers, from whom he managed to prise away £5,000 after waging money on himself. Now that is an example of some of the soundest judgment ever shown by a sports star when in contact with the deciders of odds.

But on the same weekend in which Drummond elevated the spirit with his derring-do with putter, wood and iron, there was a blow delivered to those who revel in sporting shocks.

Before the stunning conclusion to events at Wentworth I was at a family christening. During the party afterwards one guest slipped away to watch the European Grand Prix.

It prompted me to ask 'why?' as the outcome was surely so predictable. "Michael Schumacher is going to win, so that's it, end of story," I told the would-be viewer of the motorised procession of tedium around the Nurburgring.

Now that was not said with any authority. What I know - or care - about Formula One racing could be written on the back of an infant's fingernail and still have room for the week's shopping list.

But can there be any interest in Grand Prix, save for whether the latest great British hope Jenson Button will actually win a race? The cool, metal-shiny evidence is that such a scenario will only crop up if Schumacher suffers mechanical failure as he did at Monaco which reduced his record so far to just six conquests from seven races.

Grand Prix is just a yawn-fest and hardly deserving of the massive air-time devoted to it. Better to watch tyres being inflated.

Updated: 11:05 Tuesday, June 01, 2004