When I sat down with six-time major champion Lee Trevino at Medinah, during Presidents Cup, I had one specific mission: to see if he remembered a ghost from Romania’s sporting past. I am a Romanian journalist researching the history of golf in my home country, and I needed to ask one of the game’s greatest legends about Paul Tomita, our lone Cold War-era golf professional.
To my delight, Trevino remembered him immediately—right down to the pipe Tomita kept clenched in his teeth during his swing.
“I told him it was illegal,” Trevino laughed, recalling their time together at tournaments like the 1969 World Cup in Singapore and the 1971 World Cup in Palm Beach. “I said it’s an aid, because you’re turning your head and when your shoulder touches that pipe you’d come back down.”
I shared Tomita’s story with Trevino, much of which I’ve recently uncovered through secret police files. When the communists took over Romania, Tomita was the only golf pro spared from prison, saved simply because he came from peasant stock rather than the aristocracy. Confined to a six-hole diplomatic club course—which he would loop three times for a full 18—he was eventually allowed to travel to the World Cup in 1968 due to Romania’s maverick political stance at the time. He and his student always finished dead last, but his presence was a victory in itself.
Trevino listened as I described how Tomita, when asked where he was from, would tell competitors “Transylvania.” When they inevitably brought up Dracula, Tomita would answer, “Yeah, Dracula, scratch golfer.”
Paul Tomita in Romania in 2002 sporting a 1971 World Cup cap. (Photo: Emanuel Tanjala/Alamy)
Hearing the reality of Tomita’s struggles, Trevino grew deeply reflective. He recognized that Tomita was competing against guys who had every advantage—equipment, facilities, and freedom.
“It takes a certain type of person to stay with the game of golf and just teach it… when there was no reward at the end of it,” Trevino told me. “Without people like him, the game wouldn’t exist.”
Before he passed away in 2004, an 81-year-old Tomita built Romania’s first 18-hole golf course in Transylvania, driven purely by passion.
Trevino compared Tomita’s scrappy dedication to a young Seve Ballesteros learning to play on a Spanish beach with a single 3-iron. For a legend like Trevino, who also rose from humble beginnings, Tomita’s lifelong devotion resonated deeply.
“There is no question in my mind that if this gentleman here would have been born in England or the U.S., he would have been sitting right next to us,” Trevino said. “I like when people come from a humble beginning and pursue a sport that they’re not supposed to be playing.”
(You can watch my full interview with Lee Trevino on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/92y53_Qmoz0)
Radu Roman
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