Thomas is gathering intelligence on Augusta

World No. 2 hoping knowledge can lead to improved play, No. 1.

If there is something Justin Thomas has learned from slogging through his first two Masters, the time he has spent with a club in his hand here may not be as important as what he does with the time he does not.

More than any major championship, Augusta National reveals its secrets to the players who come to know it the best. Local Masters knowledge trumps all. Ask Fred Couples, who continues to contend here in his late 50s, fortified with the lessons of more than 120 competition rounds.

Which is why Thomas, perhaps demurely but ceaselessly, keeps polling the elders — Phil Mickel- son, Tiger Woods, even Jeff Knox, the tournament’s designated amateur marker when it needs to fill out a twosome — about preferable targets and where the evil lurks.

How he employs such intelligence can go a long way to determining if he can actually compete here, which he has yet to demonstrate. But it could also deliver him the No. 1 world ranking come Sunday, not that there isn’t already enough to play for.

“I pretty much would just watch (playing partners during practice rounds) where they were chipping and putting from,” Thomas said. “And then when they were done, I would just take my balls and I would go do the same stuff. They know what they’re doing out there. So either they were messing with me and I just hit a lot of unproductive shots or, hopefully, I learned some stuff.”