David Toms had to at least try. His tee shot on Friday on the 18th at Firestone had settled underneath a clump of pine tree branches, he couldnât see his ball standing over it and so he explored his options with a rules official.
What followed during Fridayâs second round of the Senior Players Championship was, over a few minutes, engaging, funny, painful and spectacular.
To begin, Toms first wondered whether he could position himself around one of the branches. At play was Rule 8.1 that tells you to âplay the course as you find it,â and Toms wanted to do that, as best he could.
âYeah, but what Iâm saying is, if I go under here and then I come out, or you see what Iâm saying,â Toms said to the official, the conversation picked up by Golf Channel microphones. âLike, Iâm going to get â¦
âYou want to do that to get in there?â the official asked.
âI can do that,â Toms said.
âYou can do that,â the official said.
Success. Only not really. Though Toms maneuvered himself around a branch and was now close enough to swing at the ball, he still couldnât see it.
âThat is as close to a normal [stance] as we can get,â the official said. âSometimes you have to deal with the abnormal so thatâs â¦â
âWhat can you do to at least see your golf ball?â Toms said.
âYouâre not necessarily entitled to see it,â the official said. âYou canât break anything or move it.â
The truth hurt.
Bizarre sequence stuns 3 analysts, ruling is made â and caddie takes a picture
âJust swing at it and hope you hit it?â Toms said.
âIâm afraid so, yeah,â the official said.
âThatâs fine,â Toms said.
Standing nearby, a fan may have summed it all up well.
âBeen there, done that, bro,â he said.
Resigned to his fate, Toms stepped away, grabbed a club and returned. He moved his head left, then right. Nope, nothing still.
âI canât see my ball,â Toms said.
In the end, that didnât matter. With a short follow-through, he pitched his ball back to the fairway, and he finished with a bogey five.
âOh, success,â analyst Lanny Wadkins said on the Golf Channel broadcast.
âThat was really well done,â analyst Phil Blackmar said.
And Tomsâ final thought?
âOh, god.â