PGA champ Thomas not alone in going to Colonial

FORT WORTH, Texas — Justin Thomas made the 300-mile trip south to Colonial the day after winning the PGA Championship, had some lunch and then went to the gym to work up a sweat. His practice sessions this week have been short and efficient.

It was a needed couple of days to recoup and get his mind and body ready to play again after rallying from seven shots back to become a twotime major champion.

“Obviously, I want to enjoy it and I don’t want to just act like it didn’t happen because it did, but at the same time I have a week next week off potentially to just enjoy it,” Thomas said Wednesday after playing a nine-hole pro-am. “I have a golf tournament this week, and I’m just trying to perform and play as well as I possibly can.”

Thomas wasn’t alone in traveling from Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Colonial Country Club, where the No. 5 player in the world is competing for the third consecutive year.

Seven of the top-10 finishers from the PGA Championship are in the 120-player field for the Charles Schwab Challenge that tees off Thursday. That includes runnerup Will Zalatoris after the three-hole aggregate playoff and Mito Pereira, whose 72nd-hole double bogey knocked him out of the lead and kept him from making the playoff.

Zalatoris lives in the Dallas area, but didn’t even show up at Colonial until Wednesday. He said he was trying to get his energy level back up after his fourth top-10 finish in his last five majors.

“Got a lot of rest the last few days. I practically just slept — I didn’t realize how tired I really was,” said Zalatoris, the 14th-ranked player who two weeks ago missed the cut at his hometown Byron Nelson.

Thomas will play the first two rounds in a group with defending Colonial champ Jason Kokrak and Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 player even after he missed the cut at Southern Hills. Zalatoris is with former Colonial champs Justin Rose (2018) and Kevin Kisner (2017) in a group just ahead of Pereira.

The last seven Colonial winners, and nine former champions overall, are set to play. There are six of the world’s top 10 players — and 11 of the top 25 — with ninth-ranked Jordan Spieth the only Colonial winner also in that group.

Kokrak won at Colonial last May in a finalgroup showdown with Spieth, who led at the end of each of the first three rounds before a closing 3-over 73. He finished two strokes behind Kokrak, who after 65s in each of the first two rounds, finished with five bogeys and five birdies to shoot even part the last day.