Kapalua’s winner adds to youth surge
Jordan Spieth made it tough on everyone in his age group, including Justin Thomas, who won the Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, Hawaii on Sunday.
The high school class of 2011 featured Spieth and Thomas, along with Daniel Berger, Patrick Rodgers, Ollie Schniederjans and Emiliano Grillo. Another of their friends from junior golf, Smylie Kaufman, was one year ahead of them.
They all were top players with bright futures.
None proved it quicker than Spieth, which merely raised the bar for everyone else.
After failing to get through the second stage of qualifying school, and with no status on any tour going into 2013, Spieth managed to get special temporary status on the PGA Tour, picked up his first title that summer, made it all the way to the Tour Championship, played in the Presidents Cup and cracked the top 25 in the world.
Thomas turned pro that summer, in 2013, spent a year on the Web.com Tour and had no trouble getting to the big leagues. In his rookie year, he was in the hunt five times on Sunday, including the Players Championship, without winning.
It would be easy for Thomas to feel as though he were underachieving, even after such a strong rookie season. All the talk was on the youth movement, and he desperately wanted to be part of it. Thomas had just turned 22.
Two years later, he is part of the conversation.
Thomas started the new year by winning the Tournament of Champions for his third PGA win and second this season. He moved to a career-high No. 12 in the world ranking, joining Spieth (No. 5) and Hideki Matsuyama (No. 6) as the only players under age 25 in the top 15.
“I think it drove me a lot,” Thomas said. “It’s weird, I mean, some of the friends ... I wasn’t mad, but it was maybe a little frustrating sometimes seeing some friends and peers my age do well. Not because I wasn’t cheering for them, but because I felt like I was as good as them.” McIlroy on Olympics: Rory McIlroy says he resented how the Olympics forced him to decide whether he would represent Ireland or Britain and that it reached a point that it “wasn’t worth the hassle” to compete in Rio.
In an interview with the Sunday Independent in Ireland, McIlroy explained why he was so critical of golf ’s return to the Olympics during a news conference at last summer’s British Open.
McIlroy, the four-time major champion from Northern Ireland, cited concerns over the Zika virus as his reason not to go to Rio. But he told the newspaper that when the IOC announced in 2009 that golf would be part of the program for the first time since 2004, “all of a sudden, it put me in a position where I had to question who I am.”