Justin Thomas ‘fully capable’ of year like world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler had in 2024
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Justin Thomas plays his shot from the second tee during the first round of the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club.
PHOTO: REUTERS
HAWAII – Even though he is 2½ years removed from his latest PGA Tour victory, Justin Thomas remains a confident player.
The 31-year-old 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 on Jan 1, referring to the world’s No. 1 player who won seven times on the PGA Tour in 2024, including the Masters and the Tour Championship.
“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.
He added: “I underappreciated (winning) then, for sure. I truly felt like I was going to win multiple times every season pretty much, until I lost it a little bit. 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.”
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.
He missed out on selection for the United States team who competed in the Presidents Cup, which he admits is motivation as he strives to make the Ryder Cup team in 2025.
For others like Chris Kirk, the focus from Jan 2-5 is on retaining his title at The Sentry as he tries to fend off challenges from veteran players and a crop of rising young talents.
“It’s different in so many ways, it’s hard to really sum it up,” the 39-year-old American said on the differences on the Tour since he was breaking in.
“The level of play and the consistency of players is really high. I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to kind of keep up and progress...
“I feel like I’m so much a better player now than I was then, but everybody else is, too.”
He praised improvements in terms of golf course agronomy before adding: “Obviously we’re playing for a whole lot more money, and I’ve been amazed, I think that a lot of us were kind of worried about what would the Tour be like when Tiger (Woods) was not out here every single week.
“I’ve been really pleasantly surprised that the Tour has flourished, and we have a ton of great young stars, and there are great stories each week. I know there are a lot of things that people want to see changed still, and things that could be better, but professional golf is just in such a great place.”
Kirk is in a good place as well. He ended an over seven-year title drought when he won the Honda Classic in February 2023, and then he opened the 2024 season with his victory at The Sentry.
He finished in the top 35 in three of the four Majors in the year before tying for 27th at the Tour Championship.
Looking ahead to 2025, he said: “My goals are to really just sort of stick to my routines of what I like to do to prepare each week.
“My time at home is more work on my physical fitness and strength and stuff in the gym, and then get the golf stuff in when I feel like I need to.”
Sixty players will tee off on Jan 2 (Jan 3, Singapore time) in The Sentry, with the field reserved for the top 50 players from the 2024 FedEx Cup race plus anyone who won a tournament throughout the year.
But Scheffler will not feature after suffering a puncture wound from a broken glass while cooking Christmas Day dinner. He needed surgery to remove fragments of the glass from the palm of his right hand.
Xander Schauffele, the world No. 2, will be the main attraction in Hawaii, with Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy also opting to skip the event.
Schauffele is coming off a breakthrough season that saw him win his first two majors – the PGA Championship and the Open Championship.
He will play the first two rounds with Wyndham Clark and Sweden’s Ludvig Aberg. Other notable players in the field include Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Will Zalatoris, Tony Finau and Max Homa. REUTERS
