Matchplay. Interesting ?

This week's truth-in-advertising award goes to the bosses at the PGA Tour, whose slogan anticipated by a few weeks the very possibility that Jeff Maggert and Andrew Magee would wind up in the final of the Match Play Championship: "These guys are good."

No kidding.

But what about interesting?

To their relatives and a small circle of friends, no doubt. Then throw in golf junkies, snowbirds, retirees, the folks at Andersen Consulting who put up the $5 million bounty and their families, the folks at ABC who agreed to televise it and their families, and unfortunately you've pretty well exhausted the demographic for Sunday's telecast, the PGA's first big-time experiment with a match-play format in a long time.

The problem wasn't entirely with the golf.

Sunday's final was competitive enough, even skillful by turns. The match was tied at the end of regulation and didn't conclude until Maggert holed a dramatic chip-in on the second extra hole, from the first cut of rough just off the green, a distance of 20 feet.

"The ending was pretty classic," Magee said. ``I even enjoyed it a little bit, being the weirdo I am."

And the problem wasn't entirely with the storylines, either.

This wasn't like Albert Belle sneaking past Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to steal the home-run title. Both Maggert and Magee are deserving guys, the kind of long-suffering, thirtysomething journeymen the tour needs by the dozens to stay in business. They form the backbone, fill out the fields, contend in many places but win in precious few of them. And they know how to melt into the background at precisely the right moment.

In fact, neither man had won since 1994, but Maggert has come close so often he should be certified to teach graduate-level courses in how to be a runner-up. He has finished second 13 times since 1993.

"I waited 5½ years for that," Maggert said. ``I needed a win for me, myself and I."

But maybe not for the rest of us.

We understand that both men reached the final fair and square. The highest-ranked player Magee beat was No. 15 Darren Clarke, but he was in the same bracket as David Duval, Ernie Els and Justin Leonard. It wasn't his fault none of them were around when he showed up at the front of the parade. And Maggert took down Nick Price, Bernhard Langer and top-ranked Tiger Woods in 48 hours.

But if the Match Play reminded us of anything -- save that the tour is loaded with guys who, as the commercial touts, are good -- it reminded us of this: Great sporting events are defined either by brilliant play or transcendant personalities; and the absolutely best sporting events feature both.

This one had neither.

Magee said afterward that, "If people had put blinders on and thought we were Tiger and David Duval, they wouldn't have known the difference."

As a measure of personality, that is certainly more true of Duval than Woods. Both are capable of igniting a crowd with their golf. But while Woods' fist-pumping celebrations and club-pounding displays of anger are occasionally over the top, at least they never leave us wondering the depth of feeling that launched either emotion. He is in every sense -- hero or villain -- a leading man.

On the other hand, it was possible to watch every moment of the Maggert-Magee match, as it is possible to watch Duval sometimes, and not know where either golfer stood for long stretches of time. They missed birdie putts and cringed, pulled their hats lower and tromped off toward the next green. They missed par putts and cringed, pulled their hats lower, etc.

There wasn't a field in pursuit, there wasn't a number in the clubhouse they had to get under, there wasn't ... well, the suspense you expect a tournament with a $1 million check for the winner to generate.

The PGA Championship abandoned match play 40 years ago and the tour squashed its little experiment with the format at the Tucson Open little more than a dozen years ago because there was no guarantee the marquee players would stick around to the end.

What persuaded commissioner Tim Finchem to bring it back with the world's 64 best golfers in a one-and-out format was percentages. He reasoned that year in, year out, the best players would perform well enough to yield a compelling final four most of the time, and a Woods-Duval extravanganza every so often.

Without one of those in the next year or so, the match play concept will run into trouble. It's expensive for one thing. And for another, good as these guys are, good won't be enough to make people tune in year after year.