Justin Thomas could not resist a cheeky dig at recently crowned US Open champion Wyndham Clark, as the pair played together in the opening round of the Travelers Championship.
Clark wrote himself into the history books at Los Angeles Country Club last Sunday by winning his first ever major championship. The 29-year-old saw off some of the world's best players in Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Rickie Fowler to secure the title.
There is no rest for the US Open champion though, who has returned straight back to action at the Travelers this week, joining both Thomas and Max Homa in round one.
Amid their venture around the TPC River Highlands though, Thomas took the chance to make a joke about Clark somewhat taking advantage of his royalties as a major champion. With Thomas in close on the green, Clark found himself with an 80-yard approach shot.
Ahead of his approach the US Open winner appeared to ask his fellow American to mark his ball due to it being close to the hole. In response a sarcastic Thomas was heard commenting: "Guy wins one f****** US Open and I gotta mark it from 80 yards.”
Of course the cheeky dig was a light-hearted one with Thomas a good friend of both playing partners Clark and Homa. It is fair to say Thomas and Clark's form has differed in recent weeks, with the former going through an uncharacteristic rough patch in recent weeks.
In his last six starts, the former world No. 1 has missed three cuts and broke into the top 20 on just one occasion. Thomas has been the first to admit his form has not been good enough of late, and alluded to this after missing the weekend in LA last week.
"It's weird because I felt like I was playing the best I've played in a really long time this week, end of last week," Thomas said after missing the cut. "It's a funny game, man. You know, it can leave you speechless good and bad, and right now it's unfortunately the bad.
""It's definitely the lowest I've felt. It's pretty humiliating and embarrassing shooting scores like that at a golf course I really, really liked. I thought it was set up really well.
"I worked so hard after Memorial [where he also missed the cut] and I was swinging great and I was really, really hitting a lot of good shots and I felt like I could 100 per cent win this golf tournament, and I didn't and obviously just played really poorly. Just gotta figure it out."
