It’s often readily apparent what ails someone on the PGA Tour. Strokes Gained metrics can be as accurate as a surgeon’s scalpel in that respect, exposing a wayward driver or a balky putter. Sometimes causation isn’t so conspicuous. Perhaps a player isn’t devoting the necessary attention to his game because he’s spending too much time in doctors offices with a sick family member, or racking up billable hours with a divorce lawyer. Statistics can’t measure such factors, but their impact on performance can be every bit as deleterious as injuries and swing flaws.
On Tuesday at the Players Championship, Justin Thomas met the media and—unlike Rory McIlroy, who vacated the podium just before him—admitted that he’s not really searching for anything in his game. “I’m just trying to keep it as simple as possible,” he said. “I think it’s easy to search for too much or think that I need to find something when I maybe don’t, if that makes sense.”
At face value, that’s an innocuous statement for most professional golfers, but a revealing one coming from a famously driven competitor who has been producing cruddy results for two months. Since January 9, to be exact. That was the third round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions, during which Thomas was caught on camera muttering a homophobic slur after missing a four-footer for par.
Justin Thomas walks off the 18th hole during the first round of the 2021 Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua. (Photo: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports)
He owned the aftermath, was fulsome in his apology and pledged to atone for the mistake. But he has not been the same player since. He eked out a third-place finish that week. In three events since, he has logged a missed cut at the Genesis Invitational and a pair of uninspired showings at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and the WGC-Workday Championship.
Thomas’s recent performances say less about his form than about the bruising impact of being confronted by a social media mob imbued with what the author Philip Roth memorably described as “the ecstasy of sanctimony.”
In that maelstrom, Thomas was dumped by one of his sponsors, Ralph Lauren. Another sponsor, Citi, publicly scolded him with a statement that veered closer to condescension than compassion. Easy to see why his mind might still be lingering on those self-inflicted distractions.
“I have definitely been better. But at the same time it’s a good opportunity for me to try to grow and learn and get stronger because of it,” Thomas said. “I think it’s kind of put a lot of things in perspective, and unfortunately for my golf, it’s taken a toll on that a little bit.”
“You know, at the end of the day I’m like an iPod Nano; I just keep shuffling,” he added, with a humorous flourish worthy of Jimmy Fallon.
TPC Sawgrass isn’t hospitable terrain even for players who are focused, and Thomas’s record here is mixed. In five appearances he has only one top-10 finish (T3, five years ago) but he’s never missed a cut and no one has made more birdies here since 2015, 98 in all. He didn’t add to that tally last year since the Players Championship was called after one round as the COVID-19 pandemic began its deadly march across the country. Just as he did last year, Thomas has returned to a house near the course that he is sharing with Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth. He got in Sunday, and got a little emotional too.
“The last time I was up there and Rickie and I were sitting on this couch with his wife and we’re trying to figure out, what are we going to do, what’s going to happen, what’s going on. I’ve never seen anything like this,” he recalled. “It definitely brought back some very odd, bizarre memories, but it’s crazy to think it’s been a year. It’s crazy to think we’re still in it.”
A view of the 17th green at TPC Sawgrass after the cancellation of the 2020 Players Championship. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)
The pandemic was the backdrop to a challenging professional landscape, one to which Thomas adjusted better than most. After the PGA Tour resumed play in June after three months locked down, Thomas won the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational and had seven other top 10s—including three seconds—through the end of the year. The dawn of ’21 brought an altogether more personal challenge.
Thomas has been asked about the fallout from the homophobic f-bomb at most press conferences since Maui. He hasn’t shrunk from the inquiries. At every asking, he owns it, expresses his regret and talks about his need to learn from it. What Thomas can’t say—but what needs saying nonetheless—is that it’s time for him to move beyond it, to compartmentalize whatever personal progress he hopes to make from the professional performance he needs to deliver.
He can work on being a better person at home. Out here, he needs to refocus on the business at hand.
“It can go astray so fast,” he said Tuesday. “Maybe just have some things go on in your personal life…” He was talking about the ephemeral nature of the professional golfer’s existence and the many things—the specter of injuries, the fickleness of form, the fugaciousness of confidence—that can upend a career.
“That’s just all on you. You’re the only one out there that’s going to play each and every day, each and every week, each and every year. You really just have to make the best out of what you have.”
That’s a governing principle for Thomas, the idea of ownership, taking responsibility for his failures as much as his successes. It’s a mindset he will need competing on one of the most demanding venues on Tour. Pete Dye’s masterpiece at TPC Sawgrass is a medieval rack upon which the world’s best golfers are stretched to find where they break and where they hold. Of the 154 men in the field this week, Thomas stands alone in already having faced and survived that examination in 2021.