Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture Discussion Group => Topic started by: Daryl "Turboe" Boe on June 05, 2005, 05:03:23 PM
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I just noticed David Toms subtly giving a fan the finger on the 9th green. Apparently someone said something when he missed his second putt and was about to hit his third putt it caused him to back off breifly. When he picked the ball out of the hole he wiped some sweat off the right side of his nose with "That Finger" while looking straight at where that fan was sitting.
Anyone else notice that?
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Anyone else notice that?
Yes, I just reviewed my Tivo and there was no doubt about it.
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Daryl,
I saw it live and wondered if he was flipping someone the bird. Now that you mention it I wonderd why he backed off that putt which was no more than foot long.
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Toms absolutely did it - it was the old middle digit just to the side of the nose along with a "you are an idiot" staredown.
I wonder what it'll cost him?
Things like this are what make TiVo priceless :)
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No doubt about it: mono-digital articulation.
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It must have been an Ole Miss fan.
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JB
In that case, they probably had it coming. Hoddy Toddy ::)
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I was cracking up....I saw it today too!
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Very classy.
Maybe next week he'll jump through the ropes and "NBA" one of the fans.
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he must be fined
nothing wrong with going over and confronting the fan in a more civilized manner, but the finger is not good
I think Tiger is usually on his best behavior, but when he utters the f-bomb that is really bad
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Daryl,
When I saw him do that, I thought he was getting something out of his eye. ;)
JJ
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Saw it on TV this morning. Pretty funny really. He was looking right at the jerk!
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It's all about plausible denial, at least I'm sure that's what Toms is thinking about this morning . . . what costs him more, damage to his marketability if he admits flipping the bird or damage to his credibility if people don't believe his denial . . . if I'm him I deny it and say I had something in my eye and but also that I was disturbed by something near where he was looking and was glaring that way at the same time . . .
sounds plausible to me.
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this from the Columbus Dispatch
"Toms tapped in for a bogey 5, pulled his ball from the cup, looked at the fan and offered an obscene gesture. It was made to look like a nose scratch, at first. It was caught by CBS television cameras for a brief moment before the network cut away to another hole.
Asked whether he’d offered a "subtle salute" to the fan, Toms asked for clarification.
When the clarification was given, Toms said, "What kind of question is that? Do I look like someone who’d flip someone off in the crowd? I mean, I can’t believe I’m even talking to you."
Not only did a CBS camera capture Toms’ finger, a Dispatch photographer also got a clear picture of the gesture."
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Mr. Toms is a class act. That being said I applaud him for the grace in which he made his point. I did see it live and thought his performance was just within the lines of propiety because of the deniability factor. What is subtexturally great about it, is that it shows the passion and emotion that is often lacking almost every week on tour. In Brad Klein's book "Rough Meditations" he comments on this difference betwix the pga and LPGA tour players.
Seeing Bart Bryant hold back the flood of emotion when Kostis caught him right when he was the winner, was also cool viewing. Watching Freddy struggle over the read on that eagle putt on 15 was telling, too.
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Adam,
If I did the same thing Toms did to a collegue at work, I'd immediately be put on probabtion and possibly even fired.
Why should the PGA Tour, which is in the entertainment biz, be any different?
There's no possibility for denial. The jerk in the crowd obviously said something across the pond to him as he missed his par putt. The look on Toms' face was very telling too.
Actually, I'd hope that he'd be a man about it and say, "Yes, I did it. I was trying to my job and he went way beyond the lines of socially acceptable behavior and was casting slurs about...". I could buy that one.
I'll be interested to see if Tommy Hilfiger, his shirt patron, drops him. Nah - they probably love it ::)
By the way, this is the same David Toms who said that he will not return home during the US Open if his wife gives birth. (I may be wrong about the last part, but I think I read something like it in Golf World last week).
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Mr. Clayman,
"Just within the lines propiety"??? Sorry, I'm not buying it. A subtle flying of the middle unit is still flying the middle unit. Losing your cool does not translate into having passion and emotion. If it did, then Ron Artest and Rasheed Wallace would be lauded as two of the greatest sportsmen on the planet right now.
I agree: David Toms is a class act. He just took a momentary vacation from it.
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Mike, that's quite a stretch, comparing NBA hooliganism with a PGA pro responding in an ambiguous fashion to someone heckling him in what's usually a "heckle free" zone. Nobody got this upset when Steve Williams stomped a photog's camera during a tournament. Toms' response might have been in bad taste, but comparing it to a felony assault during an NBA game is a bit too much to accept. IMHO.
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Paul Thomas, for Toms to go over and confront the fan he'd have had to walk across the water. Not even PGA pros can do that!
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Nicklaus could in his heyday ;D.
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Mr. Scaletta, I'm not selling, I just have the balls to provide an opinion. If you call what Toms did losing his cool, then I beg to differ. He had to be very cool to make his point while still obtaining deniability. The quote above, that someone posted, shows he's no dummy and will forever be able to deny it.
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thanks Bill
I hope Steve Williams got fined or something for what he did
Toms should just fess up and apologize...as Deep Throat showed us, it's the cover-up that will get you every time!
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We wouldn't have incidents like this, the various Williams incidents or even the NBA stuff if people could maintain some level of decorum. It always bugs me when someone is criticised for standing up to the lousy behavior at sporting events today. The troublemakers are the problem, not the responders.
This does not mean that they should respond in a similar fashion, it just means I'd like to see people dragged out of events when they misbehave....
You'll see a lot worse on any trading floor - just ask Adam. :)
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I believe it was at a recent Western Open that Davis Love pointed out a heckler to officials and they removed the guy
of course people shouldn't do that shit, but responding to them like Toms did brings him down to their level and lowers the image of golf
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Adam,
I guess we'll just agree to disagree......ironically, Steve Rushin in SI just had a column about this phenomenon.
Field Guide To the Bird
Reds closer Danny Graves was recently released after making an obscene hand gesture to a heckler in Cincinnati. A year after Phillies closer Billy Wagner was sidelined by an inflamed middle finger, Graves finds himself sidelined by an inflammatory middle finger -- i.e., the finger -- which the ancient Romans called digitis impudicus and modern Americans simply call the bird. As Graves put it, "I flipped a man off."
From the Middle Ages through the Digital Age, every age has raised its middle digits. The right middle finger of Galileo -- detached and preserved -- is on permanent display in the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence. It stands (quite literally) as an eternal rebuke to those who denounced the astronomer as a heretic and a quack.
Until Rasheed Wallace arranges to have his middle finger displayed, permanently and posthumously, in a perpetual bird, he's done the next best thing: The Pistons forward had his 2004 championship ring resized to fit his middle finger.
But then athletes have always flipped more birds than Harlan Sanders. The first photographic evidence of a human giving the finger is believed to be the 1886 team photo of the Boston Beaneaters, in which future Hall of Fame pitcher Charles (Old Hoss) Radbourn is at once watching, and discreetly flipping, the birdie.
It was a pose reprised by Billy Martin on a famous Topps baseball card. As the then Tigers manager leans on a bat, Martin's left middle finger extends downward, as if he's about to ask the photographer that ancient playground catechism, "Can you hear this? Shall I turn it up?" That card is from 1972, the Year of the Bird, when Dolphins running back Larry Csonka also flashed an inverted finger, this one on the cover of SI. That same year Canadian sportswriter Jim Coleman -- overcome after Team Canada beat the Soviet Union in hockey's Summit Series -- turned from the press box and flipped off Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev.
Indeed, a Field Guide to the Birds of North America would reveal a distinctive pecking order. Batters flip off umpires. (Milton Bradley gave ump Eric Cooper the finger after a called third strike in 2001.) Umpires flip off writers. (Hall of Fame ump Bill McGowan was suspended in 1952 for directing his digit toward scribes in St. Louis.) Writers flip off world leaders. (See Coleman versus Brezhnev.) And world leaders flip off just about everybody. (Footage of then Texas governor George W. Bush giving a TV camera the finger is widely available on the Internet.)
As the Trashmen sang, "Everybody's heard about the bird." French-Canadians flip l'oiseau. (Captain Guy Carbonneau was traded by the Canadiens after flipping off a newspaper photographer.) Koreans flip the seh. (Then Red Sox reliever Byung-Hyun Kim once gave the finger to fans at Fenway.) And Spaniards flip el pájaro. (Sergio García flipped off U.S. Open hecklers at Bethpage Black when they began counting his regrips out loud.)
But it's America where the national bird is the bird. In a recent speech to the graduating class of the Columbia Business School, PepsiCo president and chief financial officer Indra Nooyi called America the "middle finger" of the global marketplace. Our twin passions for sports and obscene gestures intersect most profitably in the giant foam-rubber middle fingers waved by fans of wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin.
Sports' most famous bird flew in Houston, where a dozing Oilers fan roused himself and flipped off a Monday Night Football camera. But it's Philadelphia, cradle of the Constitution, that is the Athens of our Digital Age. As Giants defensive end Michael Strahan fondly noted, "It's the only place where you pull up on the bus and you've got the grandfather, the grandmother, the kids and the grandkids -- everybody -- flipping you off."
The middle finger doesn't just look like an exclamation point. It is one, the emphatic punctuation to a memorable moment. Bears quarterback Jim McMahon, after holding for a game-winning field goal attempt, flipped off the Packers' bench as the ball split the uprights. In his final, fatal race Dale Earnhardt flipped off Kurt Busch while passing him. It looked very much like your commute, except this bird flew at 180 miles an hour.
Ted Williams was once talking with Tony Gwynn when an overbearing fan asked to take Ted's picture. As Gwynn later told New York Post writer Kevin Kernan, "The guy with the camera says, 'Hey, Captain,' because Ted had his fishing cap on. He says, 'Hey, Captain, look in the camera.' And Ted flipped him the bird and the guy took the picture and I've got that picture. It's in my archives. Nobody will ever see it. But I have it."
If Williams was the quintessential American, then this is the frozen Ted that belongs in our national memory: not the actual Williams, frozen in Arizona, but the Williams frozen on film, his middle finger eternally upright alongside that of another genius, Galileo. They are two birds, like the phoenix, forever rising from beyond the grave.
Issue date: June 6, 2005
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this from the Columbus Dispatch
Asked whether he’d offered a "subtle salute" to the fan, Toms asked for clarification.
When the clarification was given, Toms said, "What kind of question is that? Do I look like someone who’d flip someone off in the crowd? I mean, I can’t believe I’m even talking to you."
A class act would admit to having done what he did, in fact, do.
"I can't believe I'm even talking to you"? Sheesh. There's a class act for you.
I wish he'd have said, more or less, what the defendant said to the judge in an old New Yorker cartoon: "Well, sure I killed the guy. What's that -- a crime?"
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Not a classy act in any shape or form. Golf is supposed to be a gentlemans game.
I'm sure his parents and children are proud.
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Maybe the universe concedes a golfer one instance of acting like an arse in public for every major championship win. If so, David Toms is all square going to the back nine.
By contrast, John Daly is five down and just about out of holes.
Tiger Woods has really had a back-and-forth match so far by this standard. He keeps racking up the wins and his caddie gives them right back.
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My respect for Toms has been diminished, and that's what should concern him. Obviously, I'm not alone in feeling that way.
As Rushin's column points out (man, there's been a lot more birds throughout sports history than I was aware of), athletes lose their cool and make mistakes. It happens, and it is almost always forgiven, because we're all human.
But to do it in a sneaky way -- to preserve "plausible deniability" -- and then to lie about it afterward, is the behavior of a coward.
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Wow my innocent little question while watching the golf has generated some interest. I logged off shortly after posting that and just got back here.
Ironically enough my wife is friends with some of David Toms family and we almost feel as though we have gotten to know him a little bit. He has always seemed like such a good guy, I was really surprised to see it. I too think you can chalk it up to competative fire and that right when things were starting to fall apart for Toms yesterday this guy piles on at the right moment. I guess we are all human even those guys out on tour and David probably in hindsite made a dumb decision, but at the time I am sure his judgement was slightly clouded.
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looked to me like his nose was itching
David Toms is a class act.
and if you were in contention(as Toms clarified) to win a U.S. Open choosing to leave would not be as easy a decision as many make it out to be.Toms just has the guts to give the politically incorrect answer.
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In 1966 I went to Yankee Stadium to see a Yankees-Red Sox game with 3 college friends, two of whom were Sox fans. In stark contrast to today, Yankee Stadium had about 3000 people in attendance (it was a Wednesday afternoon game, early in the season, and the Yankees were over the hill and destined for the cellar that year.
Roger Maris, a shadow of his 61 in 61 season, was playing right field for the Yankees and my two friends rode him unmercifully for 8 1/2 innings. We were sitting down the right field line and the stadium was so empty you could here everything.
I don't remember the exact score but the Sox were comfortably ahead, and after they went out in the top of the 9th Roger, on his way back to the dugout, held up his glove and gave my friends the middle finger salute. Which of course just made all of us laugh hysterically and provided a lifetime's memory.
I didn't see the Toms incident on TV but it seems like the fan deserved what he got and probably has more respect for Toms 'lowering' himself to his level. So what's the big deal?
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Mike -- So why doesn't he just admit he did it, instead of telling the reporter off for asking him about it?
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and if you were in contention(as Toms clarified) to win a U.S. Open choosing to leave would not be as easy a decision as many make it out to be.Toms just has the guts to give the politically incorrect answer.
Huh?
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Rick,
I have to agree with you on that one
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Update: no fine.
No fine for Toms (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/pga/2005-06-07-toms_x.htm)
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Update: no fine.
No fine for Toms (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/pga/2005-06-07-toms_x.htm)
"plausible denial"! :)
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Year ago, Stan Love, a Laker reserve, showed me a an 8 X 10 b & w glossy of Milwaukee's Kareem Abdul Jabbar on the court giving a referee the double salute, both hands at the same time. Now there are so long fingers. So many times I wished I had obtained a copy of it. Just think what it would get today on e-bay.
It's best John Wooden doesn't ever see the picture. Just as its best he doesn't know one of his former stars has come out of the closet. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
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Dammit Lynn, first the stuff about the Golf Channel babe, now this... you know a lot of secrets that are screaming out to be told.
OK, you have to at least give us a little narrowing of the era - Wooden coached a LONG time and has a lot of former stars. I don't want to start guessing.
;)
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Dammit Lynn, first the stuff about the Golf Channel babe, now this... you know a lot of secrets that are screaming out to be told.
Tom IV --
The man said he "came out." Thus, it's no secret.
Besides, I thought everyone knew this story.
Dan
P.S. It's not Lynn -- so far as I know.
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...and who could ever forget Grampa Stamper's arm (Henry Fonda), lashed to the mast of a log-herding tugboat, defiantly posed with erect middle finger to the angry townsfolk in Ken Kesey's "Sometimes A Great Notion" ?(aka "Never Give an Inch")?
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Dan - perhaps it's no secret to you, and it's surely no secret to the man's friends, but it sure as hell is a secret to me, a former worshipper of all things Bruin hoops, during those Wooden years... and apparently it remains a secret to Wooden...
Not that this worship will decrease in any way... but well... I am curious.
TH
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Make that two who want to know
And while I am at it how did Ms Mills get her job?
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I should have never mentioned these gossip items.
I think Jennifer Mills is very good at what she does and obviously so does Arnold Palmer, one of the Golf Channel owners.
As for the other, the Bruin hoopster played in the NBA and every year of his pro career his scoring average dropped.