Even though he is 2 1/2 years removed from his latest PGA Tour victory, Justin Thomas remains a confident player. The 31-year-old University of Alabama alumnus enters the season-opening event, The Sentry at Kapalua, Hawaii, this week, eyeing a career-best year.
“I still fully believe that I can have a year like Scottie (Scheffler) just had,” Thomas said Wednesday, referring to the world’s No. 1 player who won seven times in 2024, including the Masters and the Tour Championship.
Padraig Harrington, Steve Elker tied atop Simmons leaderboard after Round 2
“… I think I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t think I could at least do that. I have a lot of faith and capability in my game, and I feel like I’m working on the right things.”
The most recent victory for Thomas was the second major win of his career, at the 2022 PGA Championship.
His best year in terms of wins was 2017, when he captured five events, including the PGA Championship.
“I underappreciated (winning) then, for sure,” he said. “I truly felt like I was going to win multiple times every season pretty much, until I lost it a little bit.
It is, it’s just so hard to win out here. … Naturally, the better player that you are, you can get away with more mistakes, but come the end of the week on Sunday, you have to win the golf tournament.
“Winning it in different places can happen differently. You can maybe get it given to you a little bit more than other times, but you still have to do a lot of things correctly and hit the shots and make putts when you need to to win.
And, yeah, I was fortunate where I was doing it quite often and, I mean, I still feel like I’m fully capable and expect to do that more, but I definitely felt like it was, it should have happened regularly kind of thing.“
In the 2024 season, Thomas competed in 20 events and had his best results at the start and end of the year.
He began with a tie for third at The American Express and a tie for sixth at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and he closed the campaign with a tie for second at the Zozo Championship.
Thomas missed out on selection for the US team that competed in the Presidents Cup, which he admits is motivation as he strives to make the Ryder Cup team this year.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to play pissed off for awhile, so I’m pretty excited to play a little pissed off this year,” Thomas said.
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