‘I needed that’: For Justin Thomas, Players comeback means more

Last week Justin Thomas shot 79-79. He missed the cut. He finished in last place at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

This week? Justin Thomas opened with a decidedly different double: 68-68. Through two rounds he’s T4 at the Players Championship, in contention for a second title at TPC Sawgrass on the five-year anniversary of his first.

But regardless of what happens this weekend — and if you’ll pardon the cliche — Thomas is already leaving this week a winner.

It’s always tough to know how easy it is for top pros to wipe the slate clean after a bad week. Thomas’s 79-79 came under specific circumstances; Bay Hill was his first competitive appearance following a four-month layoff after back surgery last fall. Coming off a long absence meant, in theory, that Thomas could give himself a break. In reality, though? When a reporter asked if giving himself grace had helped him move on; Thomas could only laugh.

“You probably wouldn’t say that if you were around me on Friday afternoon. I was more just sad and upset,” he said. He’d struggled keeping his focus. He’d struggled finding fairways. He’d struggled hitting greens. And he’d struggled putting once he’d gotten there. That was all understandable, from an outsider’s perspective. It was a little tougher for Thomas to handle.

“When you kind of post two pretty humiliating scores, it’s hard to give yourself too much grace,” he said.

His final answer Thursday was particularly revealing.

How validating is this, he was asked, that maybe you weren’t as far off as it might have seemed [last week]?

Thomas could have bristled at the implication that his golf game — and his belief in that golf game — could be shaken in two bad rounds. He admitted the opposite.

“Man, it helps,” he said. “I kind of had a deep breath to myself walking off [his final hole] and I said, internally, ‘I needed that.'”

Then on Friday Thomas followed that opening-round 68 with another strong day, making birdie at the challenging 18th to match his Day 1 score with another one.

It wasn’t easy, particularly on the mental side. On the back nine Thomas told his caddie Matt “Rev” Minister just how tough a time he was having keeping his focus.

“I get spacey, and [I’m] over the ball and somehow thinking about nothing. I’m not thinking about the shot I’m trying to hit, not thinking about the yardage I’m trying to hit it. It’s just, I get lost,” he said.

You wouldn’t have known it from watching. Thomas’ round was an exercise in patience; he hit his first six greens in regulation and walked off with par on his first six holes before he started showing off his short game, first with an up and down from 150 yards at No. 7, then with a 20-footer for birdie at No. 8, then another par save from the bunker at 10 and then the crown jewel: a holed pitch shot for eagle from left of the green at No. 11 that shot Thomas up the leaderboard.

“It was a pretty sick chip,” he said. “Just trying to visualize it and see it and hit my spot, and luckily the hole got in the way. It was nice to steal one there.”

Thomas flared his tee shot on the next hole and made bogey — in his view, a focus-related issue — before dialing up his ball-striking the rest of the way home. He had birdie putts inside 18 feet on each of his final six holes, made two of them and booked himself a late tee time on Saturday.

“The biggest thing for me is commitment and feeling confident about the decision that I made, the club I’m hitting, whatever it is,” Thomas said. He clearly found something there. Now it’s a matter of keeping it going.

It’s fitting that Thomas’ bounceback comes at this tournament, where just a year ago he rebounded from a first-round 78 with a second-round 62. He’s a resilient golfer.

Thomas has plenty to gain on the weekend, namely the reversal of a troubling trend of results in the sport’s biggest events. Thomas remains one of the sport’s top talents, but since winning the 2021 Players he’s done no better than T33 in four return visits. And since winning the 2022 PGA Championship he’s cracked the top 30 in a major just once, a T8 at the 2024 PGA, missing seven of 14 cuts in the process. His latest victory came less than a year ago, and at a Signature Event, last year’s RBC Heritage. Still, as we’ve been reminded, the Players is at a different level. Contending here would go a long way.

But Thomas already come a long way. Shooting 79-79 and returning a week later to shoot 68-68 gives him a baseline of confidence that’s easy to build on. Early this week he talked about being disciplined in his rehab and he said he’s trying to keep a long view.

“I can play this sport competitively and really, really well for another 10 to 15 years like, no problem if I just go about this how I should,” he said. (Thomas is 32.)

“It sucks … not to be sharp for some of these events that I love. But, you know, in the big picture it’s like, if I struggle at the beginning of the year to come back from this injury and I go win a couple majors this year, like nobody’s going to remember that I just shot 14-over at Bay Hill, right?”

They might remember. But only because it’d be a great start to a great story.