TROON, SCOTLAND | A year is a long time in linksland golf.
Last July, Justin Thomas carded an 82 in the first round of the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, a calamitous effort that included five bogeys, two double bogeys and a quadruple bogey-9 at the final hole.
“That’s 8-year-old, 9-year-old kind of stuff, not someone who’s trying to win an Open,” he said. “It just sucks when it’s only the first round of a major and you have no chance anymore.”
Twelve months on, he was tucking into his Thursday lunch at Royal Troon as the clubhouse leader after signing for a first-round 3-under 68. The chances that he had blown in spectacular fashion last year are not only still alive this year, but they are positively vibrant, and does that ever feel good to him.
The 31-year-old Kentuckian knows far too much about pre-cut major-championship woes.
Even before last year’s Hoylake experience, he’d carded a second-round 78 to miss the cut in the 2023 Masters and a Friday 81 at L.A. Country Club to head home early in the U.S. Open.
“It’s humiliating and embarrassing shooting scores like that,” he said after the latter effort.
Yet there was more of the same this year: 72-79 at Augusta National and 77-74 at Pinehurst, with early departures at both.
Back in 2017, Thomas sported a vintage look in the Open’s first round at Royal Birkdale – a natty tie-and-cardigan combination that harked back to the 1920s and ’30s.
If his recent first-round efforts also have parallels with that era, it is only by unfortunate accident in the form of the pratfalls of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.
What demons and haunting memories might have been disturbed when his tee shot at 12 plunged deep into a gorse bush, however.
What a glorious contrast it must have been to swap five birdies and just the one bogey in the first 10 holes this Thursday morning. He was 4-under, leading the field, and apparently oblivious to the chilly temperatures, persistent drizzle and gloomy skies that had one wag in the gallery suggesting: “One year they should try holding this tournament in summer.”
What demons and haunting memories might have been disturbed when his tee shot at 12 plunged deep into a gorse bush, however.
He insisted after the round that the events of 12 months ago had not crossed his mind this year, but surely within his subconscious were images and feelings from the quad-bogey which at one point had him hitting literally and metaphorically backward out of a greenside bunker with his sixth shot?
“This has been a disastrous day for Justin Thomas,” Paul Azinger had said on the television broadcast after the 82, and suddenly there was potential for an appalling repeat as his ball came to rest among long thorns that threatened to prick a hole in his growing bubble of confidence.
All power to Thomas, therefore, that although he had to take a drop, made double bogey, and added a bogey at 13, he then rallied.
His tee shot at the 238-yard par-3 17th settled 8 feet from the flag, and he holed for birdie. At 18, he regained the early solo lead with another par breaker, this time from 25 feet.
After the round, he was asked about the difference between last year and this year.
“About 15 strokes,” he answered, getting it wrong by a shot but for understandable reasons.
“I couldn’t even tell you how it was then,” he continued. “I’m just worried about how I am now, and I’m very pleased with my game. The real difference? I’m just doing everything better.
“I had great control of the ball, and I hit a lot of fairways, which is a key to any major but definitely in an Open. You need control hitting into these greens. There was a little bit of a hiccup in the beginning of the back nine, but I stayed patient and kept plugging along.”
“I feel like everything has been turning the right way and that I’ve been working on the right things. I haven’t had much to show for it, and that’s just how this game works sometimes.” – Justin Thomas
His confidence is rising.
“I feel like everything has been turning the right way and that I’ve been working on the right things,” said Thomas, a two-time PGA champion and former world No. 1 who has slipped to 29th in the Official World Golf Ranking. “I haven’t had much to show for it, and that’s just how this game works sometimes. But the shots I’m hitting, the scores I’m shooting – I know that I’m close.”
He also rates Royal Troon highly among the other Open rota courses.
“I love them all,” Thomas said. “In fact, I have yet to play a links course that I dislike, but Troon is a proper test. There are some very subtle uneven lies in the fairways that make the approach shots a little bit more difficult. It tests [your ability] to hold against the wind and control your trajectory. It’s a great track.”
“A couple of times I could have been a little bit more aggressive, but I just felt like it wasn’t the right time or that I didn’t necessarily need to.” – Justin Thomas
As much as the poor pre-cut golf has been a trend, there is another pattern which looms large despite the fast start.
The 68 was his first sub-70 at the Open on a Thursday since he opened his championship career with first-round scores of 67-67-69. On all three occasions, he sat inside the top 10 on the 18-hole leaderboard. He then added rounds of 77-80-77.
More pertinently, perhaps, last week he thrashed a brilliant 62 to grab the first-round lead in the Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club, but could only tack on scores of 72-71-71 to finish T62.
He rated this week’s first round effort better than last week’s. A man who once said “for as much as I love links golf and the Open, I have not played it very well in my career” was able to reflect positively on a narrowing of the gap between affection and results.
“I had great control off the tee,” he said. “I was creative and holding it against the wind to make the fairways a little bigger. A couple of times I could have been a little bit more aggressive, but I just felt like it wasn’t the right time or that I didn’t necessarily need to.
“That’s a part of links golf that I’ve gotten better at and matured.”