Surgery will keep Toms out of Hawai'i swing

Associated Press

David Toms went to three doctors before accepting the inevitable: bone spurs on his left wrist will require surgery and cause him to miss at least the first three weeks of the PGA Tour season.

Toms pulled out of the Target World Challenge next week in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and his agent said the surgery would be Dec. 9.

"It was a very tough decision," David Parker at Links Sports said Tuesday afternoon. "But once they evaluated what was going on, it was the right thing to do."

Parker said Toms will miss the Mercedes Championships (Jan. 8 to 11) at Kapalua, Maui, and Sony Open (Jan. 15 to 18) at Waialae Country Club, and probably the Bob Hope Classic. The former PGA champion hopes to return to the Phoenix Open.

The winner is: The deadline for PGA Tour players to submit their player-of-the-year ballots is today, and the results will be announced Monday.

The leading candidates are Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh, although most players would love to have three victories and the green jacket hanging in Mike Weir's closet.

It should be the closest vote since Mark O'Meara and his two majors trumped David Duval and his four victories, the money title and Vardon Trophy.

How close? No one will know. The PGA Tour only says who won, not by how many.

"Our intention is not to release the vote total, but to declare the winner," PGA Tour spokesman Bob Combs said. "Just as the Oscars don't tell you who finished second or fifth, neither does the tour."