Justin Thomas is the highest ranked player in the Honda Classic.
PALM BEACH GARDENS — A year ago Justin Thomas was just a spectator congratulating his buddy Rickie Fowler on the 18th green at the end of the Honda Classic.
Thomas missed the cut and wasn’t playing that day. Though he was already a rising star at 23, the Jupiter resident wasn’t as widely recognizable as he would be later in 2017 when he won the PGA Championship on the way to becoming the FedEx Cup champion and PGA Tour Player of the Year.
Those achievements make the Louisville, Ky., native arguably the player to beat in this year’s Honda, beginning Thursday at PGA National. He is the highestranked player in the field, No. 4 in the world rankings.
Nonetheless, Thomas is well aware that most of the attention and noise will be focused on the group just behind him with the Tiger Circus back in town for the first time since 2014.
Thomas experienced that first hand for the first time last week when he and Rory McIlroy played the first two rounds with Tiger Woods in the Genesis Open outside Los Angeles. After two days of bedlam, Woods missed the cut and the crowds dispersed.
“It was just bizarre because those first two days there’s so many people, and then Saturday morning there was nobody,” Thomas said Wednesday. “I mean, we got out there and Rory and I were walking up to the tee, we’re like, ‘where is everybody?’ Does he really bring that many people?”
The answer is that a similar scene is anticipated at the Honda Classic, where it would seem there is only one player and three holes to be concerned with. Pretournament chatter is all about Tiger and the Bear Trap.
Meanwhile, Woods is no better than 50-1 to win, according to various Las Vegas lines. He will be a long shot just to make the cut if he doesn’t putt better than last week, which he pointed out Wednesday wasn’t good at all.
Based on a computer predictions model, SportsLine.com had defending champion Fowler favored at 9-1, followed closely by Thomas and McIlroy at 10-1.
It will take more to win than avoiding trouble on the tricky Bear Trap trio of holes, 15, 16 and 17, where the biggest crowds will congregate and many pitfalls await.
The Champion Course presents plenty of other problems, and they are magnified when the wind pipes up, as it usually does this time of year.
“It’s a very difficult course. It’s just kind of very dependent on what kind of weather and conditions you get that day,” Thomas said. “My rookie year when I missed the cut, I think I dropped maybe nine times in two days. I hit it in so many hazards it was unbelievable. It’s pretty easy to do.”
The wind was ripping during Wednesday’s proam, and Thomas turned in the top score of the day at 7-under-par 63. He had five birdies and an eagle on No. 2 during the bogey-free round.
Fowler will be bucking the difficulty of repeating. No one has won the tournament back-to-back since Jack Nicklaus in 1977-78, when it was at Inverrary.
Last year, Fowler won by four strokes despite bogeys on the last two holes and plunking a tee shot into a lake earlier in the final round.
“There’re plenty of shots here that if you kind of lose your focus or nitpick a touch you can end up in some serious trouble,” Fowler said. “One of the toughest tee shots is No. 6, the one that did go in the water there. To me, a tough spot is the second [shot] at 11. We always have the wind whipping around. Sometimes when it’s off the right, you actually have to start it out [over] the water.”
McIlroy can attest to the vagaries of PGA National where small fluctuations can make a big difference. He has won and finished second here, but missed the cut the last two times he played Honda.
“Feast or famine, that’s what my history’s been here,” McIlroy said. “I think it magnifies if your game’s off just a touch. If you miss it just by tiny margins here, it can punish you quite heavily. But if you’re on, it gives you opportunities to score, and I think that’s what’s happened.”
One place players cannot let their guard down is in the Bear Trap, rated as the sixth-toughest three-hole stretch on tour since 2007.
The Bear Trap accounts for 17 percent of all bogeys, 32 percent of all double-bogeys and 35 percent of all triple-bogeys or worse on the Champion Course. Since the Honda Classic moved to PGA National in 2007, 76 percent of the players have hit at least one ball into the water on the Bear Trap.
Consequently, Fowler’s secret to success in the Bear Trap is, “Stay Dry.”
Not easy to do with lakes hugging all three holes.
No. 15, a 179-yard par 3, which has had 572 splashdowns in the 11 years of the Honda Classic, features a diagonal green fronted by a lake, and the slope runs toward the water.
No. 17 is a longer par three that requires hitting over a wide lake, and this week it has been playing directly into the wind.
There is also the matter of crowd noise, which will be amped up by Woods’ presence.
“I was going to say the crowds may be a little bit better [than last week],” Thomas said, “but I’m playing in the group in front of him, which might be even be worse than playing with him. So, I’m just going to be worried about what I’m trying to do, I guess."