Toms’ Time Has Arrived Once Again

David Toms has tempered expectations entering the Nissan Open this week at Riviera Country Club, and that is to be expected considering he hasn’t played competitive golf in nearly three months.

A nine-time PGA Tour winner and the 2001 PGA champion, Toms had surgery on Dec. 9 to remove bone spurs from his left hand. He spent six weeks in a cast and then four more weeks healing.

Doctors cleared him Friday and he promptly played 18 holes in his home state of Louisiana in 38-degree, windy weather. That was the first time he’d played since the Presidents Cup in late November. The Nissan Open marks his 2004 competitive debut.

“I missed golf,” Toms said. “I missed competing. I’ve been watching guys play golf on the weekends and I like to be right in the middle of that so hopefully I can find my game soon and be right in the middle of the action on Sunday afternoon.”

Toms won twice on tour last year and earned $3,710,905 to finish eighth on the money list. He said his hand progressively grew worse as the season went along and his results suffered. Both of his victories last season came before July and only one of his seven top-10 finishes came in the second half of the season.

He was on medication and rehabilitating most of the second half but finally gave in to the prospect of surgery: a difficult decision for someone who depends on his hands as much as a golfer.

“It got to the point where it was getting worse and worse and worse,” Toms said. “I finally had to have something done. I consulted with four or five different doctors and [surgery] was what I needed.”

Doctors removed the bone spurs, but Toms said he still feels pain and hinted it is bad enough that he might have to withdraw from the Nissan Open if it doesn’t improve.

“It’s bothering me a little bit right now, but I think that’s just building the golf muscles back up,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to go Thursday morning.”

Toms, a Louisiana State graduate, is looking forward to playing in front of USC football fans after LSU and the Trojans split the national championship, but he probably won’t be too heartbroken should his hand prevent him from playing.

In six starts at the Nissan, Toms has missed the cut five times. He finished tied for 44th in 1996. He skipped the tournament four consecutive years from 1999 to 2002. Still, he said he needed to try to play a tournament in preparation for the World Match Play championships next week in Carlsbad. Toms was runner-up there last year.

“I love Riviera, I just never seem to score well here,” he said. “I’m anxious to be playing golf again. That’s one of the reasons I’m here even though I haven’t had a whole lot of success here. And you never know. You get excited, make some birdies and you never know what can happen.”

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The late Jim Murray, a sports columnist for The Times, used to joke with his cronies at Riviera that he had two goals in life: to win a Pulitzer Prize and to hit a drive that cleared the hill on the famed 18th hole. He achieved one of them before he died in 1998: A plaque commemorating his 1990 Pulitzer hangs in The Times’ building.

Were he alive today, he might still be trying to achieve the other, and a recent lengthening of the hole wouldn’t make it any easier. In a random sampling of 24 amateurs during a pro-am Monday, nine failed to hit their drives over the hill -- and they were playing from the forward tees.

The hole is now 475 yards from the back, 24 yards longer than it was last year. It’s also 4 1/2 feet lower, making the hill that much more difficult to climb.

“Wow,” said PGA Tour pro Tripp Isenhour on arrival at the tee during the pro-am.

Stephen Leaney trailed behind his caddie walking toward the 18th tee. When he arrived, his caddie had a rhetorical question: “This is a par four?”

The tee box for the professionals extends about 25 yards. Monday the tee markers were set in the front, but that didn’t stop professional Patrick Moore from teeing up from the back.

“I want to see the full hole here,” he said.

He then hit a low hook that came within a foot from scraping the top of the hill, but cleared it.

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Mathias Gronberg, the first alternate, has had quite a week already. He got in the Nissan Open when Marco Dawson withdrew Sunday, but then was knocked out because Bo Van Pelt finished in the top 10 in the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines on Sunday afternoon.

Anyone finishing in the top 10 receives an automatic exemption for the next week, knocking out the last player allowed in.

Gronberg was back in, however, when Scott Hoch withdrew Monday.

Chris Riley, who lost a playoff to John Daly on Sunday at Torrey Pines, also withdrew Monday. Joe Ogilvie, the second alternate, replaced him.

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Esteban Toledo will conduct a youth clinic with trick-shot artists Dennis Walters and Thad Daber today at 3:30 p.m. at Chester Washington Golf Course in Los Angeles.

More than 300 kids, ages 7 to 17, will learn from Toledo and witness the exhibitions by Walters and Daber during the clinic, part of the USA Network Youth Golf Clinic Series.