Golf’s new young gun

Justin Thomas is very much a modern golfer, said John Huggan in The Daily Telegraph. Although he cuts a slight figure, weighing less than 11st, the 24-year-old Kentucky native hits the ball “startlingly” far, putting enormous effort into every shot. In the past, that “aggression” has cost him dearly – most recently at June’s US Open, when he started promisingly but fell away to a ninth-place finish. But in the PGA Championship last weekend at Quail Hollow, in North Carolina, there were no such mistakes: Thomas held his nerve to win his first major by two shots. And he did it in style, making a birdie on the penultimate hole.

Thomas’s win was a “milestone”, said Bob Harig on ESPN. It followed the victory of Jordan Spieth, Thomas’s close friend and rival, in The Open last month; marking the first time in 94 years that two players under the age of 25 have won back-to-back majors. And it continued a curious trend in golf: Thomas is the eighth firsttime major winner in the last of nine such events – in that time, only Spieth has won more than once. It was a great week, too, for Jordan Smith, a 24-year-old from Bath, said Ewan Murray in The Guardian. Only two years ago, he was struggling to make ends meet in golf’s third tier. But with his victory in the European Open last month, he earned a maiden major start at Quail Hollow. Smith “made the most of it”: he finished the tournament in ninth place, ahead of any other British player.