Reigning player of the year lives up to billing at Honda Classic
PALM BEACH GARDENS — How wild and wobbly and ultimately convincing was Justin Thomas’ win at the Honda Classic on Sunday, a photo finish with both playoff rival Luke List and the vanishing sun?
Start with the fact that the PGA Tour’s 145-pound monster nearly got a hole-in-one when his tee shot hit a rock wall fronting the No. 5 green and shot 80 feet straight up but wound up rolling tantalizingly close to the cup upon re-entry from orbit.
“We kind of hear a click and I had no idea but all of sudden I saw it almost went in,” Thomas said. “Then the crowd
was kind of going nuts and my caddie went, ‘What happened?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know but I’m about 12 feet, so give me my putter.’ ”
That’s when things are going your way, all right, but later, when they weren’t, JT was just as locked in. He kept it together mid-round when consecutive drives sailed way right and had spectators scrambling for safety. He saved par twice from the thick green-side gunk on Nos. 15 and 17.
And then, when List had the upper hand as the two approached the 72nd hole, the 2017 PGA Player of the Year lived up to his billing by lofting a 117-yard wedge shot to 3 feet for the birdie that sent them on to a bonus 73rd hole at eightunder-par 272.
From there it got a little sloppy, and a lot rushed. List, the 54-hole leader in search of his first PGA Tour win, pushed his tee shot into a cluster of palm trees and his second shot to the base of the grandstand along the cart path on No. 18.
It still came down to a 3-foot putt for the win, of course, because this is the daunting Champion course and nothing comes easy, but 2017 Honda champion Rickie Fowler already was waiting behind the green, his cap turned backwards and ready to shift into full party mode with his Jupiter neighbor.
“Obviously, it hurts right now,” said List, who shot rounds of 66, 66 and 69 the last three days and stayed right with Thomas when other contenders like Alex Noren and Tommy Fleetwood couldn’t, “but I think when I look back on it, I’ll be proud of the way I hung in there.”
That’s the right read. List played the back nine in four-under 32, and there’s an intimidating Bear Trap to clear in that finishing kick. Tiger Woods could have made some real noise coming home like that, but he hit his tee shot in the lake on No. 15 for the second straight day and bogeyed the 16th hole, too.
Tiger’s surprising finish in 12th place will be the biggest takeaway from this tournament for many fans, of course, but JT isn’t worried about that or anything else in the glow of his eighth career PGA Tour win and the second of this wraparound 2017-18 season. “To be honest,” he said, “I don’t care. I’m sitting with the trophy, so
I’m fine with it.”
This is the way that majors commonly play out, and in truth this gritty 68 by Thomas was every bit as taxing as the Sunday 68 he shot to win the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in North Carolina last summer. In both cases, JT started the day just off the lead but ended up the last man standing. It’s not a surprise any more, not with the Jupiter resident up to No. 3 in the Official World Golf Rankings, but now Thomas, just 24, is threatening to push everybody else out of the way.
He is coming off a fivewin 2017 season as reigning PGA Player of the Year, and he’s so cool about it all that he was munching on an energy bar while walking up the fairway on the playoff hole Sunday, his second shot already resting on the par-5’s putting surface. Who knew that just a few minutes earlier he was peering into the fading light, hoping that his 5-wood to the green hadn’t gone the only place that could hurt him?
“It was getting pretty dark out to where I couldn’t see it,” JT said, “and as sad as it is, all I was looking at was the water to see if it splashed, and it didn’t. So I figured I was in the bunker and then people started clapping and I could kind of see a little white dot so I was like, ‘We hit the green.’ ”
Flying blind, in other words, the ultimate test of a player’s pluck. Thomas is feeling so good that he tempted fate by announcing, “I feel very confident in pretty much every part of my game right now.”
There’s no sense in trying to push his buttons either. On the 16th tee Sunday, Thomas turned to seek out a fan who he said was calling out “Hit it in the water” and “Get in the bunker” and other such nonsense. “I just turned around and asked who it was,” said Thomas, “and he didn’t want to say anything now that I had acknowledged him. So he got to leave a couple of holes early.”
Missed a great closing act, as it turned out, in a tournament that at one point right around the turn had four players tied for the lead.
Only one gets to leave Palm Beach Gardens with a Waterford trophy, however, and JT, who joins Rory McIlroy, Ernie Els, Padraig Harrington, Adam Scott and Fowler in the long line of big-name Honda winners at PGA National, made that crystal clear.