Justin Thomas shot a three-under 68 within the first spherical of the 2024 Open Championship.
Getty Photos
TROON, Scotland — All these lads are on journeys, ya know. Rory McIlroy is on a really public one, 10 years and counting. Bryson DeChambeau is on one other, studying a factor or two about maturation. Bob MacIntyre’s journey of leaving Scotland and coming again — it climaxed final week. However how in regards to the journey of Justin Thomas?
Twelve months in the past, the 31-year-old was busy taking 82 strokes round Royal Liverpool, a stretch of golf he referred to as all-time low. He was attempting too arduous, he mentioned on the time, compelled to listen to questions on his well being, about utilizing his father as a coach, about his Ryder Cup standing. The journey from there to Thursday, the place he shot the most effective rating of the morning — a three-under 68 — it isn’t even that simple for him to elucidate.
“I don’t know,” Thomas mentioned Thursday. “I’m simply doing, I’d say, the whole lot higher.”
There’s loads of fact in that reply, primary as it could be. He’s driving it higher, approaching the inexperienced higher, chipping it so much higher, and placing about the identical.
“I couldn’t even inform you what I used to be pondering or the way it was then,” Thomas mentioned. “I’m simply apprehensive about how I’m now, and I’m more than happy with my sport and know issues are persevering with to work in the correct path. I’ve simply acquired to maintain attempting to play nicely.”
Okay, then — overlook 12 months in the past. Let’s speak about seven days in the past, when Thomas was on this identical precise place, atop the leaderboard after 18 holes. He was chipper, glad to roll by the gauntlet of interviews on the Scottish Open: TV station to TV station to radio to written press to a social media clip captured on a cellphone. The gear geeks have been fawning over that new putter of his that was making the whole lot. Once you play nice golf, the eye follows. Once you don’t play nicely, the eye wanes. Cue the second spherical highlights …
… Of Ludvig Aberg.
By the point Thomas was finished capturing two over the subsequent morning, he was already six behind Åberg. When he completed dinner Saturday evening, he was 12 pictures again. Thomas chalked it as much as getting “nothing out of his rounds” regardless of hitting nice pictures — blaming the hidden-from-plain-sight unluckiness of hyperlinks golf.
“I felt like on Saturday I hit it in six first cuts, they usually have been simply sort of a wierd size,” he mentioned. “It’s much like right here the place it’s a must to guess if it’s going to leap, if it’s going to spin, and I’m fairly positive I used to be oh-fer six on these.
“It’s simply little issues like that that clearly you don’t see as an outsider or actually anyone else whenever you’re taking a look at a scorecard however once I’m on the market taking part in, I really feel like I’m hitting quite a lot of actually high quality pictures or drives and simply getting nothing out of it.”
Why Justin Thomas’ ‘p*ssed off’ 62 felt so necessary
We will not be on the market monitoring each lie he faces, however it is a two-time main champion and a 15-time Tour winner. We haven’t been ignoring him. We’ve tracked the placing woes. And his ball-striking drop-off. We have been watching that 82 final yr at Hoylake, and even the 81 on the U.S. Open a month prior. We tuned in when he almost holed out to qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs. We debated his advantage as a Ryder Cup captain’s decide, and over-analyzed if his 1-2-1 document in Rome validated it.
When his 2024 began on a excessive observe, golf followers began betting on Thomas once more. Right here he comes. And the skeptics have been there when he missed a second-straight reduce on the Masters. However when he started this event 4 underneath by 11 holes, loads of us have been happy. Why? As a result of all of us wish to consider in these scorecards these guys flip in after what looks like a stellar spherical. We wish to know {that a} 68 within the wind and rain feels as significant as it might appear to somebody trying to find his first victory in three years. Once you begin consecutive tournaments with a greater rating than everybody else, we wish to marvel — identical to Thomas would possibly — if this odyssey of ups and downs is sort of over.
The way in which he talks, Thomas should see it as a journey, too. On Thursday, he mentioned he’s shut. Near no matter feels proper to him. Near determining hyperlinks golf. Final week was part of it. Final yr was, too. Similar for no matter awaits him tomorrow.
