Justin cracks a choke
Thomas turns envy of pal into major title
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — He’s not just “Jordan Spieth’s best bud” any more. Today, Justin Thomas is the guy with his name somewhere Spieth’s is not. Engraved on the Wanamaker Trophy.
When the week began, the central story of the 99th PGA Championship was whether Spieth would become the youngest golfer to win the career grand slam. After a remarkable finish won Spieth the Open Championship last month at Royal Birkdale, Thomas shared some libations sipped out of the Claret Jug with his boyhood friend as they flew home together on a private plane. Spieth was the winner of a major for the third time. Thomas was still just his friend from their amateur golfing days, albeit a friend with three PGA Tour wins this year and a failed chance at this year’s U.S. Open, when he fell apart on Sunday and bogeyed three of the first five holes playing in the final group to take himself out of contention.
Crushed by the weight of that disappointment, Thomas failed to make the cut in his next three outings, including the British, and you began to wonder if the weight of other’s expectations and his best friend’s success had begun to wear on the 24-year-old kid from Kentucky whose dad and granddad were both longtime club pros and had pointed him in this direction for as long as he could remember.
“Frustration probably isn’t the right word,” Thomas said yesterday when asked about those times. “Jealous definitely is. I mean, there’s no reason to hide it. I wanted to be doing that and I wasn’t.”
If you are as talented as Thomas, where you go from such disappointment is up to you. You can shrivel up inside broken dreams and let them bury you, or you can bow your neck, beat back the strongest field of the season and hoist a 27-pound trophy over your head after a half dozen guys all take runs at you, including world No.3 Hideki Matsuyama, his playing partner yesterday.
After 12 holes, five names were bunched together, tied at the top of the leaderboard at 7-under. Thomas didn’t realize things were that close until he saw the scoreboard as he approached the 13th tee, a tricky 208-yard, par 3. Two swings later he had the lead.
“At the U.S. Open I learned I needed to be a little more patient to win,” Thomas said. “I felt I had the game to get it done. It was just whether I would.”
He did, shooting a 3-under-par 68 to win by 2 after Francesco Molinari, Patrick Reed, Louis Oosthuizen, Rickie Fowler and Matsuyama all fell by the wayside. So did poor Kevin Kisner, who led for three rounds but melted down under the Sunday heat, much as Thomas had at the Open at Erin Hills, shooting 3-over 74 to end 4 shots back.
Unknown Chris Stroud did the same, but that was more understandable. He had only gotten into the tournament by winning the previous weekend in Reno, Nev., his first victory in 290 Tour starts. For three days he hung in, starting the day 1 shot off the lead. But the clock struck midnight on his longshot dream long before sunset as a 5-over 76 that left him tied for ninth. It was a great finish for an 11-year journeyman, but no dream.
That belonged to Thomas, whose father Mike started him in golf when he was a kid in Louisville, pouring his hopes and his heart into his skinny offspring. Yesterday, Thomas delivered on all his promise on an afternoon filled with ups and downs and lead changes on an unyielding track at Quail Hollow that had the hardest four closing holes in golf.
Thomas survived them, birdieing 17 and then settling for a safety-first bogey on 18 when he was sitting on a 3-shot lead. But the big moments came on Nos. 1 and 10, the first when he made a touchy putt for bogey which, had he missed it, could have set off memories of his struggles at the U.S. Open.
“The putt on one was pretty big,” Thomas said. “Starting with a double there would have been pretty terrible. That would just have been such a bad double to start the day. When that putt went in it was definitely a relief.”
With his canoe righted before it took on water, Thomas soldiered on, hovering near the leaders and sometimes being one until on 10 his putt seemed headed for a birdie when it hung on the lip, unmoving for several seconds. Thomas stared in disbelief as the ball sat stock-still. As he turned to walk away a full 10 seconds later, the ball suddenly dropped in for birdie.
“I didn’t even see it go in,” he said. “I was looking at Jimmy (Johnson, his caddy) asking, ‘How does that not go in.’ I threw a little fit to see what would happen ... then gravity took over.” In a sense, so did Thomas. His hopes mounting, Thomas calmly holed a chip for a birdie 2 on 13 from the back fringe on a hole only six golfers birdied all day. Of the six, Thomas was the only one feeling the kind of pressure that was by then mounting around him and after that chip the only one holding the tournament lead.
“That chip in on 13 was huge,” Thomas said. “That was a roar like I’d never experienced. That was the most berserk I ever went on a golf course. I’m kind of interested to see how I looked for that.”
Then came a birdie on 17 that was the crowning moment, putting him 3 up with one hole to play. It was a moment he’d first told his father would happen 19 years ago, a promise from a young boy who had no idea how hard it is to make such a promise come true.
“Like all kids he said he would (win a major) around 5 or 6,” Thomas’ father, Mike, recalled. “I said that too, but I sucked.”
The belly laugh of a proud parent followed that comment. Somewhere back in Zanesville, Ohio, Thomas’ grandfather, also a club pro, surely was laughing as well.
As Thomas tapped in his final putt, sitting on a hill not far away was Spieth, Fowler and his old Alabama teammate and roommate Bud Cauley, who had finished his round just as Thomas was teeing off yet stayed to see what might happen.
What they all thought might finally did. Justin Thomas was jealous no longer. He was a major champion, a rare man who lived out a boy’s dream and made good on a promise to his dad made so many years ago.
“I just had an unbelievable calmness all week,” Thomas said. “I really, truly felt like I was going to win.”
And so he did, his only real problem on the back nine coming as he walked toward the 17th green with a chance for birdie.
“I was eating a snack and I literally almost choked,” Thomas said. “Like I started coughing and I was like, am I really going to choke on 17?”
No he was not. Not by a longshot.