NORTH BERWICK, Scotland — It was only fitting that Justin Thomas and Keegan Bradley would wind up playing in a practice round together at the Travelers Championship.
A year ago, Thomas was the Ryder Cup player with no answers. Now he was the one with the only answer that mattered.
Thomas, by virtue of being on the U.S. Ryder Cup committee, was privy to what only a select few in the world knew: Keegan Bradley was about to be named captain of the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup team. On the morning that Thomas and Bradley teed it up at TPC River Highlands, not even Bradley, a Ryder Cup lifer whose heartache and diehard fanaticism for the event have turned him into something of an embodiment of the American golfing spirit, knew of what was to come.
And from his perch in the pre-tournament grouping, Thomas wasn’t about to be the one to spill the secret.
“I’m usually not very good at keeping secrets,” Thomas said on Thursday afternoon. “I happened to play with him in a practice round after knowing it — just coincidentally — and it was very difficult to act normal. It’s one of those things you’ve got to do the right thing, and I had to keep my mouth shut. It wasn’t my place to to be that guy.”
Thomas knows the siren call of the Ryder Cup all too well. Last year, he entered golf’s European calendar stretch as the player with the most to gain as far as making the U.S. roster in Rome. His career had lapsed into a short but undeniably terrifying free fall in the early part of the summer, bookending a T65 finish at the PGA Championship with missed cuts at both the Masters and U.S. Open. Now, with the Genesis Scottish Open looming the week before the final major of the year, the Open Championship, Thomas needed to go on a run. A few good weeks in a row would right the ship, solidify his spot on the U.S. team and stem a hard-charging group of American outsiders.
Thomas arrived at the Renaissance Club for the Scottish Open last year with a head of steam, but his game quickly wilted. He finished T60, then showed up to the Open Championship, shot an inexplicable opening-round 81, and went home before the weekend arrived. By Sunday, Thomas looked up to see his game careening off a cliff, his name on the outside of the FedEx Cup playoffs for the first time in his playing career, and his Ryder Cup hopes fading fast.
We all know what happened next. Thomas made the Ryder Cup team with some help from U.S. captain Zach Johnson, who selected Thomas over the likes of Bradley. He played well in Rome, but his team got waxed anyway, a fitting metaphor for the way the great tidal wave of professional golf seemed to crash over Thomas’ 2023 season, sweeping years of positive momentum back to sea.
This week, Thomas returned to the Scottish Open with a noticeably different outfit. For one thing, he entered with a new caddie, remnants of an amicable parting with legendary caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay earlier this year. For another, he’d managed to wrangle a new putter, a Scotty Cameron Phantom similar to the one he used in ’21 and ’22. And for a third thing still, he entered the Renaissance Club with literally a different outfit. (“It would be strange pulling them out in Columbus in May,” he said of Thursday’s tartan trousers.)
He teed off in the afternoon wave on Thursday, and it was immediately apparent that his game had made the journey across the pond with him. With the wind low and the conditions unusually soft, Thomas torched the field at Renaissance to the tune of eight birdies in his first 13 holes. He thought 60 was clear within his sights until he realized the course was playing as a par-70, not the par-71 he’d originally thought it to be.
“I was like, ‘Hold on, I gotta see if I can get a couple more,'” he said with a wry grin. “I’m like, ‘I can shoot 59.'”
With a one-shot cushion and five holes to play, Thomas turned for home with a 59 in his sights. He shot 62 instead.
“Yeah, shocker, I made five pars in a row,” he said. “It kind of p*ssed me off as soon as I started thinking about it. You know what happens when you get ahead of yourself in this game.”
Indeed, Thomas does. It’s where he found himself 51 weeks ago, after a stunning MC to cap off an equally stunning major season that featured only one made-cut, staring down the barrel at an unthinkable (and perhaps warranted) missed Ryder Cup roster spot. But there can be good things in the dark moments. Calluses are one of them.
“I love links golf,” he said. “But I think I struggle sometimes playing links golf. I think adjusting and having fun with it out here is something that I’m really trying to do this week and next week — and something I feel like I haven’t done as well in the past.”
One tournament round can be deceiving, particularly for a player of Thomas’ skill level. But there was something about his energy on Thursday evening in Scotland that felt, well, bigger. A year removed from being lost deep in the golfing wilderness and p*ssed off, he suddenly stood before the assembled media with a tournament-leading 62 — and he seemed angrier.
Some players are better at their most peaceful, but Thomas’ Ryder Cup career has taught us he is best at his most irrascible. He thrives in combat, a warrior with a war, which is perhaps why it’s no wonder he found himself with an added chip on his shoulder Thursday.
“It sounds very negative, but it’s like, ‘It’s another year without a major, I gotta wait until next year to try to win a major again,'” Thomas said of Open Championship pressure. “It’s an unfortunate reality, but we only get four tries each year. You can’t get the time back.”
Yes, time in professional golf is finite, which means opportunities are too. Thomas knows the best way to get more of them is to play yourself into contention. That, after all, is the best way to be among captain Bradley’s choices to don the stars and stripes at Bethpage Black next fall.
But a lifetime can change in a year, and a career can be undone in one, too. The answers can be here today and gone tomorrow.
Golf is a sport of change, not permanence. Especially in Scotland. Beautiful, timeless, temperamental Scotland.
