The first time I saw Justin Thomas hit a golf shot in person was at Doral, when there was still a WGC tournament there. (And a new event is returning to Doral this spring.) I had been watching tee shots on the 13th, a par 3 at the far northeast corner of the course with a green that was impossible to hit and even harder to hold. When that group had finished, I turned around to see who was getting ready to hit off the 14th tee, and it was Thomas. He struck the ball with such violent force that his feet left the ground. Seriously. Both of them.
Up to that time, which was about 2016, the only other person I had seen do that in person was Dame Laura Davies at some kind of three-tour event with PGA TOUR, PGA TOUR Champions and LPGA.
Thomas was almost skinny at the time, and Davies is not. But Davies was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1987, Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2000, and in 2014, she was made a Dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honors list.
There’s no way Thomas could follow that except by winning some big tournaments, which he has done. He’s also put on a few pounds of muscle.
However, the first thing I thought when I saw his swing was, my God, he’s going to ruin his back. Well, here we are, 10 years later, one microdiscectomy down, and who knows how many to go. I am not usually that clairvoyant, although I have had my moments.
But I did know that there was this thing some golfers talk about called “ground force.” It’s not really the ground forcing anything. It’s golfers pushing off the ground with as much muscle and energy as possible to get more force into each shot and, therefore, to hit the ball farther. As though the ground was a trampoline, and we all know it’s not. So, Thomas was doing that for many years, and so was Davies many years before he did it.
Last fall, Thomas’ back problem surfaced. He may have had it before, but last fall he did something about it.
A.I. factoid: Thomas had surgery in November to fix his back issues and stated the surgery was done to ensure a long-term, pain-free career.
Hope so. Backs are fidgety.
Supposedly his first tournament post-surgery will be the Cognizant Classic in West Palm Beach. It’s the first week of March. THE PLAYERS, as you know by now, is the second week. If he makes it through the first one, he has a good chance of making it to the second. But his body could be sore after playing in his first tournament.
Thomas has a good golf mind and great touch when he needs it. He seems to be a streaky player. He’ll get hot and stay hot for quite a while and then cool down and won’t be able to find the planet. Whether that is or was because of his back, we have no way of knowing.
What we do know is that he won here in 2021. And he beat Bryson DeChambeau in the process.
March 2021, of course, was first anniversary of things coming to a grinding halt because of COVID. Then little by little we learned that sunshine wasn’t just good for laws and politicians, it killed germs. Turns out golf was one thing millions of people could get out and do because it was a healthy recreational activity. UV light kills germs!
Unfortunately, COVID did more than cancel a few golf tournaments. It was the cause of millions of unfortunate deaths, between 19 million and 36 million worldwide (9: A.I. again), which seems a wide range. Regardless, millions more people got sick and never really recovered fully. Everybody probably knows someone in that camp. I certainly do.
A.I. factoid: In the 2020 U.S. Open, DeChambeau hit drives 22 yards, on average, farther than his competitors. Only Matthew Wolff, who hit one drive 388 yards, was longer. Folks, that’s nearly FOUR football fields.
So, the bottom line here is we don’t know what to expect from Thomas. He levitated in his swing trying to get more distance 10 seasons ago. And five years ago, he won THE PLAYERS. Now, he’s coming off back surgery.
Hopefully, he will be well and fully healed, and he will be able to go out and win more PLAYERS and more PGAs and some other great tournaments as well. If he has to sacrifice some distance to keep his back working, so be it. There are plenty of courses where it won’t hurt him not to hit a drive 370 yards. TPC Sawgrass is one of them.
Golfers don’t have to hit it off the planet to succeed here. Remember Fred Funk? He’s never been called long. But he is a PLAYERS champ, and he knew how to get it done.
There are many disasters out there waiting in Pete Dye’s Little House of Horrors, and when Thomas won in 2021, he even hit a ball in the water on the 17th. But he was far enough ahead at the end that it didn’t matter.
“It's a huge championship, very special,” he said. “It's a tournament I've wanted to win, a tournament that I truly did feel like I was going to win at some point, and hopefully multiple times. I love the golf course. It was in incredible shape this week. The greens were so good. The fairways were perfect. Rough was long. Just a great test of golf. I mean, that’s why it’s a PLAYERS Championship.”
