TULSA, Oklahoma — In some respects, Justin Thomas is just what you’d expect to get if you asked central casting to send over a millennial golfer—joggers and hoodies, niblick-thin physique, social media playfulness, an easy swagger that is the privilege of youth. Yet a case can be made that Thomas is the most old school player on the PGA Tour, and Friday at the PGA Championship should be entered into the book of evidence.
Some of it is attitude, a flinty disposition that prizes grit and abhors quit. There’s plenty of old school in his golf swing too, as experts in that sort of thing will attest. Mostly, it’s evident in his gleeful embrace of conditions that flummox others, those all-too-rare days that demand imagination work in concert with execution. That’s not a challenge presented often in the weekly grind of the PGA Tour, where courses and the manner in which they are set-up tilt toward the one-dimensional. That changes if weather becomes a factor. The worse, the better, at least for Thomas.
Back in March, during the second round of the Players Championship—which was played mostly on the third and fourth days, thanks to rain delays—Thomas navigated TPC Sawgrass in 69 strokes despite a ferocious wind, and without making a single bogey. On a day when distance mattered less than trajectory, and balls seemed no safer on the ground than in the air, his was a beguiling display of shotmaking and creativity in which he hit 14 greens and needed just 29 putts. There have not been many more impressive rounds played on the PGA Tour this season.
