Criss Cross Applesauce
Fan captures photo of pro sitting on side of green while waiting for his playing partners to hit up
Unless you are as terminally online as us, it's likely you've never heard of the wild card that is Alejandro Tosti. Just one day into his PGA Tour rookie campaign, the Argentinian is working quickly to change that.
Tosti shot a four-under 66 on Thursday at the Sony Open in Hawaii, good enough for T-7 at the end of the opening round. But that's not why he became the talk of Golf Twitter later in the evening. The reason for that was this hilarious photo captured by X user Barry W, AKA @sacoomba, of Tosti sitting criss-cross applesauce off the side of the green while waiting for his playing partners to play their approach shots:
Reminiscent of Matt Every literally pulling up a chair in the middle of the fairway at a Korn Ferry Tour event due to the glacial pace of play back in 2019. Oddly enough, Tosti and Every both played golf at the University of Florida. It's a Gator thing. You wouldn't get it.
Tosti played alongside Sami Valimaki and Taiga Semikawa, who may or may not be slow players and probably aren't any slower than anybody else out on tour. In reality, everybody dealt with on Thursday, as Round 1 did not even fully complete, with 18 players still needing to finish on Friday morning, including three who have only played 14 holes. Hot start in the first full-field event of 2024.
But back to Tosti. If the name is ringing any bells, he was among the group of three players who took an illegal shuttle ride from the 18th green to the 1st tee during a KFT event last April, resulting in a two-stroke penalty for each player (and a way harsher penalty for one of Tosti's playing partners, Wilson Furr). Tosti is also the same guy who, as reported by Ryan French, AKA Monday Q Info on Twitter, was suspended from the KFT in August due to a number of incidents involving poor behavior on Tosti's part. Expletive-filled outbursts appear to be his specialty, many of them the result of slow play. The photo above is the the latest evidence that Tosti may be the only professional who hates slow play more than Brooks Koepka. Whether or not he handles it the right away is another story, however. Stay tuned for what's next with this enigma.