‘Play well or the season’s over’: Justin Thomas responds to playoff pressure with opening-round 67
ST. LOUIS — Four birdies on the back nine of his opening round drastically improved Justin Thomas’ week in St. Louis, where the 2019 BMW champion posted a 3-under 67 to sit three shots off the early lead.
Tournament preparation started abnormally for Thomas, who copped to practicing harder than usual on Monday, coming off a T-47 finish at TPC Southwind last week and entering Bellerive No. 44 in FedExCup points.
The only problem for JT? The extra work backfired — at least in the short term.
“Just couldn’t get anything going and then — more than anything — I left there in a way worse place mentally than I feel like I should have or would have liked or hoped,” Thomas said of his time in Memphis.
“[Monday] was a day that I likely would take off, but I just wanted to come out and feel like I kind of had some positivity or something to build on,” he added. “It took a lot longer than I planned or wanted it to. Really it was, honestly, a pretty terrible day, to be perfectly honest.”
A negative practice outing yielded positive results three days later for Thomas, who is one of 17 players in the field this week who competed in the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive. He and current co-leader Gary Woodland each finished T-6 in that tournament.
“I tried as hard as I could — that’s literally about the only positive I had,” Thomas said about Monday. “I was really tired, I mean, I was tired. So it’s hard to obviously try to do something when you’re in that frame of mind.”
The range session was so counterproductive that Thomas’ father, Mike, suggested he cut it short.
“‘I can’t leave in this frame of mind. Like, leaving the golf course like this, I don’t want to do that,’” Thomas said of the conversation with his dad. “But eventually I just got to a point where I feel like I couldn’t do anything and I was like, alright, I just got to start over tomorrow and that’s what we did.”
The golf world’s attention turns to St. Louis as the top 50 players in the FedExCup standings will battle it out over four days.
Thomas was in the first pairing Thursday with Sahith Theegala, teeing off shortly after 9 a.m. ET. And thanks to five birdies and two bogeys, he made a positive step in keeping alive his season.
“I take a lot of pride in being able to make it to Atlanta,” he said of the Tour Championship next week at East Lake. “It’s something I want to do. I think it would be a pretty awesome accomplishment, in my opinion, starting in March and being able to do that with I feel like a pretty average season.”
Thomas, coming off back surgery in November, began his year by shooting 79-79 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He has only two top-10s but hasn’t missed a cut since leaving Bay Hill.
There is no cut this week, so he has at least three more rounds to qualify for the playoff finale. Even if he feels like he’s playing for his competitive future.
“I was telling my wife it feels like it’s the last tournament of my life,” he joked with Golf Channel’s Kira Dixon after the round. “It’s play well or the season’s over.”
Fortunately, that’s a fear Thomas’ first-round performance helped quell.
He admitted to finding something with his swing motion on the practice range on Wednesday — a massive improvement to where he felt just 48 hours before.
“I wouldn’t have guessed it on Monday or even Tuesday that I’d be here but that’s golf,” he said. “You wait to get into a rhythm and you build from there.”
The BMW Championship continues Friday in St. Louis where the top 50 players on Tour are vying for a spot at East Lake next week.