STAR JUST GETTING TED
Thomas Pieters has made a brilliant start to the year And now seems ready to take his place among golf’s elite
he narrative around Thomas Pieters at the moment is that he’s back to his best – a best that saw him win three times in 13 months from mid-2015 and culminated in him securing a team-best four points in the European Ryder Cup effort at Hazeltine in autumn 2016. But that assessment might actually be doing a disservice to the sweet-striking Belgian. He’s even better now than he was then – on and off the course.
Pieters had a solid 2017 without winning, but he suffered something of a lull in his career from 2018 and even into last year. It was by no means a full collapse – many players would love to hover between 60 and 120 in the world rankings. But it wasn’t the upward trajectory the golfing world expected from Europe’s next big thing.
Last summer, there were signs of a return to the form that got him into that Ryder Cup team even before he clinched his fifth DP World Tour title at the Portugal Masters in November. And there wasn’t long to wait for number six – the biggest win of his career so far in the 2022 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, a lucrative Rolex Series event, in January.
“To win twice in four starts doesn’t happen very often,” Pieters tells Golf Monthly. “It’s nice to keep the momentum going. I felt at the end of last year that I just wanted to keep going as I was putting well and driving it really well. Everything was coming into place. I feel I didn’t really have the best preparation for the start of the year, but I didn’t have a lot of expectations. I just knew I was playing well and it’s nice to finally win a big one.”
Those two wins lifted him back where he belongs – well inside the world’s top 50 and heading back to the Majors.
Somewhat surprisingly, he only played in two of the seven Majors contested in 2020 and 2021, although he has played 14 overall, with a T4th at the 2017 Masters and a T6th at the 2018 US PGA Championship on his CV.
So what’s been the difference between the fallow and fruitful periods? “It’s been the putting that’s been night and day, really,” Pieters says. “If you look at my stats, I was losing on average one-and-a-half or two shots a round with putting. It’s also got to do with the fact that I do hit a lot of greens – more than average – so you’ll have a lot more birdie putts and you’re always going to make fewer putts. But I’ve been making more 10- and 15-footers and holing out for pars as well, so I’ve been very neutral to almost gaining shots on the greens, which is new for me.
“When my form dipped, I felt like I was hitting it well, but if I missed the green, I wasn’t getting up and down. I wasn’t holing much for par, I wasn’t making 10-footers on a regular basis, and it’s just hard to score and keep the rounds going that way. I did win once in that time, but I still felt that even when I won, I wasn’t putting great. So that did give me confidence that even if I don’t putt well, I can still win if I strike it perfect that week, but I have to be on.”
Putting it all in perspective
He offers two reasons for his improvement on the greens: “The guys from Scotty Cameron put this putter in my hand and said, ‘Can you please try this?’
It’s been a lot better. There’s a lot more weight in the putter, it’s counterbalanced, it’s a bit longer and it just suited my eye. I started using it at Wentworth and I’ve loved it ever since. I had been doing a lot of work on my putting, but nothing was really working and I wasn’t feeling confident. We decided to get rid of all the technique and just work on feel. I’ve just been doing one drill, which is putting right-handed, and it’s been working. I’m very much a feel player so we just tapped into that.”
It’s often in adversity that we learn the most about ourselves and what truly matters, and while the results weren’t necessarily showing it, Pieters was learning some valuable lessons in those tougher periods. A new addition to his family also helped the man who frequently displayed his negative emotions on the course to find greater perspective and maturity.
“You have to enjoy your life outside of golf, as well. It can make you so miserable if you’re not having the results, but I had a daughter a year-and-a-half ago and I go home and I try to really forget about it. It’s not like I lost my card. I’ve always contended in tournaments through the years. I haven’t won as much as I wanted, but I feel like at least four or five times a year I’d be contending for a win. I still had that feeling, that it was right there, even though the results weren’t coming in,” he says.
Having just turned 30, and with a young family at home, Pieters is entering a new phase of life: “It’s really changed my outlook. It’s a much different life now off the golf course, and I make better decisions on the golf course. I make more grown-up decisions. When you’re young, you think, ‘Is that experience really going to pay off?’ It definitely did in Abu Dhabi.”
Sitting pretty at number two in the DP World Tour rankings and the seventh highestranked European in the world at 31st (at the time of writing), he’s firmly in the conversation for a long-overdue return to the Ryder Cup in Rome next autumn. Just a mention of the words ‘Ryder Cup’ and his face lights up.
Ryder Cups over Majors
“[Hazeltine] was the best week of my life. You have feelings that you just don’t feel in a regular tournament, even in a Major. It’s so special. I’ve missed out on the last two Ryder Cups and I’ve been physically and mentally sick about it, almost. I definitely don’t want to miss any more, and I’m trying my hardest to get on that next team. It’s my main goal, it always has been. Winning a Major would be lovely, but Ryder Cups are my main goal,” he says.
“I make better decisions on the golf course now – I make more grown-up decisions”
That final sentence is quite the statement. Of course, the Ryder Cup is huge for all players, but to place it above the individual glory of winning a Major shows just how much it means to Pieters. Hardly surprising, then, that he believes the hangover from his debut appearance had a part to play in the way the next few years panned out for him.
“Without a doubt. You can pick out maybe 30 per cent of the players that have dips after their first Ryder Cup. I can think of another Belgian who had the same thing. As a kid, you look up to this one thing that you want, and afterwards, everything’s kind of lesser. It’s hard to get worked up for a normal tournament. It’s funny, because we don’t even play for money that week. I think the Ryder Cup is the biggest example of seeing how much passion there is about golf.”
Speaking of that other Belgian Ryder Cup hero, Pieters hopes he can inspire the next generation of golfers the way Nicolas Colsaerts inspired him. “I remember the moment Nico won for the first time vividly. I know where I was in the airport. I was 17 and flying to a tournament. Stuff like that, you
just never forget, because I remember thinking, ‘Maybe one day I can do that.’ It looked so cool. I hope there are kids out there in Belgium who are thinking the same thing. I try to spend a lot of time with the kids when I’m at home. I love having that role.”
A successful pairing
There’s no doubt his performance on his Ryder Cup debut did a huge amount for golf in Belgium, and a large part of his success at Hazeltine was his partnership with Rory Mcilroy. They combined for a 100 per cent record and another Pieters/mcilroy pairing would be a mouthwatering prospect for Marco Simone in Italy.
“I think we just freed up. He hits it long, I feel like I still hit it long. I was playing well, and it’s so easy to play with him. It’s nice when you know your partner is going to bail you out if you hit a bad shot. I think it was mutual. He could hit one off line and knew he could still have a birdie chance. We get along great and I’d be happy to play with him again. We’ll see,” he says.
The way he’s playing, it’s looking likely we’ll see him teeing it up alongside Mcilroy again in Rome. But before that, there’s every chance his world-class ballstriking, increased confidence with the putter and fresh outlook on and off the course will lead to more victories and a continued surge up the Official World Golf Ranking. It’s reasonable to suggest the best of Thomas Pieters is yet to come.