Justin Thomas needs thicker skin after having heckler booted from Honda Classic

****Update: Justin Thomas apologized on Monday afternoon for having a fan ousted from the Honda Classic but reiterated his justification for doing so. “I overreacted and should not have had him kicked out. I feel bad for it,” Thomas said in a series of tweets in which he also observed that “it was very understandable to have him escorted out” because “I just didn’t see a place for that particular person to be yelling at us things that weren’t necessary over and over again.”

Here are Thomas’ tweets:

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We can all probably agree that the “fan” Justin Thomas had booted from the final round of the Honda Classic on Sunday evening was bellicose and rude.

Where opinions likely differ is what to do about such hecklers who clearly cross the line from being annoying and obnoxious (we’re looking at you, “Get in the hole” guy) to boorish and cowardly, like the guy who aggressively and loudly rooted against Thomas and then refused to own up to his churlish behavior when JT confronted him.

To recap: As Thomas, who was in contention for his eighth PGA Tour win, approached the 16th tee in Sunday’s finale, a spectator (who’d had enough time to avail himself of plenty adult beverages) obstreperously offered his view on what the tour’s reigning Player of the Year could do with his golf ball.

“I hope you hit it in the water,” yelled the dimwit, who, after Thomas hit his tee shot, bellowed for the ball to find a fairway bunker.

Thomas then called out the imbecile and got him booted.

“Who said that? Who yelled for that ball to get in the bunker? Was that you?” Thomas quizzed the culprit. “Enjoy your day, buddy, you’re gone.”

Nobody enjoys the badgering from the sidelines that has been distracting players since the first Scot smacked a pebble with a stick sometime back in the long ago. And while events like the no-holds-barred Phoenix Open and increasingly boisterous Ryder Cups have ratcheted up the volume, indeed encouraged it, heckling is not new to the game.

Just ask Davis Love III, who demanded the ejection of a fan who whooped when he missed a par putt that would have squared his 2004 Match Play Championship tilt with Woods, according to the Associated Press. When the moron began chanting “No Love!” DL3 said he would take his Pro V1x and go home.

”I wasn’t going to play anymore until somebody got kicked out, because he had already cost me a hole,” Love said after the round, according to the AP account. “I mean, I hit awful shots at two. I wasn’t going to put up with it. I want to win and I want to play and I want to play fair. If his fans are pulling for him, I’m used to that.

”I’ve played with Fred Couples,” Love added. “Freddie is just as popular in California as Tiger Woods, but you can’t have people picking on you.”

Seriously?

At the time, conventional wisdom had it that John Daly’s appearance on the golf scene, as well as Woods’ ascendency, were attracting “a new breed of fans” to the course, as the AP piece indicated.

Today, it’s golf’s outreach to mainstream sports fans who are more accustomed to jeering and taunting baseball and football players, and, of course, Woods’ latest comeback, that are to blame for the hubbub outside the ropes that is increasingly affecting play inside.

“I guess it’s a part of it now, unfortunately,” Thomas said after playing the first two rounds of the Genesis Open with Woods and enjoying first-hand the frenzy that accompanies Tiger everywhere he goes. “I wish it wasn’t, I wish people didn’t think it was so amusing to yell and all that stuff while we’re trying to hit shots and play.”

Indeed, rambunctious dolts with the IQs of “mashed potatoes” (for some reason, a favorite attention-getting scream from the crowd) represents the new norm on the men’s tour. Certainly, “baba booey”-hollering blowhards are beyond irritating, but in the case of Thomas (who encouraged the boisterousness at the Wasted Open), at least the onlooker did not yell in the middle of a stroke, as happened to Tiger Woods at Torrey Pines.

Nor did he use a vile racist slur, like the human filth who was evicted from his seat at a Red Sox game last year for calling Orioles Adam Jones the n-word — truly an ejectable offense.

Perhaps it’s time for Thomas and his colleagues to develop thicker skins, as Chris DiMarco, the target of Phoenix Open needling some years back, suggested in 2003.

”I think the players are realizing that the more they fuel it, the more it’s going to happen,” DiMarco. “It’s kind of like when somebody in high school calls you that nickname you don’t like. If you look like it’s bothering you, he’s never going to let up.”

A helpful tip from a tour vet, though it should be noted that DiMarco did not exactly follow his own advice during that stint at TPC Scottsdale. After a rowdy went all Caddyshack and yelled, “Miss it, Noonan” before he made the putt, DiMarco insisted that officials oust the big mouth. They did as directed.

Thomas, by the way, overcame the unfortunate incident at No. 16 and went on to defeat Luke List in overtime. Now it’s on to Mexico City for the WGC-Mexico Championship where who knows what, if any, drunk and disorderly shenanigans await the new world No. 3?