Justin Thomas is a serial winner. Has been since his days in junior golf, and is today on the PGA Tour. The 27-year-old’s victory at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational marks his 13th PGA Tour title and launched him to World No. 1 once again.
His performance was rife with fantastic shots from tee-to-green, but the lasting moment for me came on JT’s 72nd hole, a 450 yard par-4 where he secured the tournament with one bad shot, one decent shoot, a very good shot, and a tap in. The highlights are fun to watch, but it’s often the lowlights, like this specific moment, that are what recreational golfers can learn the most from, and mark the sign of a truly elite player like JT.
It started on the tee. JT pulled a 3-wood and hit one of the worst shots of the day — something resembling a block-fade. With water and OB left, and a slim two-shot lead in the tournament, the reason for the miss was more mental than technical: Good old fashioned nerves.
“I saw that I had a two-shot lead, hence the reason I hit it right of the universe,” Thomas said afterwards. “It was not going left, I promise you that.”
There are two things worth pointing out here.
The first is what JT pointed out himself in the quote above: He immediately identified the worst-case scenario. There is exactly one shot on this tee that will lose you the tournament, and it’s missing left. Hit the ball literally anywhere but left — even if it’s a million yards to the right — and you’re still in with a chance of winning the tournament. It’s classic winning ugly, golf-is-a-game-of-misses stuff. JT’s shot wasn’t a good one, but he doesn’t care. It was exactly the right kind of bad shot (which in some ways makes it a great shot).
The second decision point was his club selection. The most common play here was to take a driver, blast it past those bunkers with a draw. Indeed, some would have probably recommended JT hit driver here too, considering he was due to finish earlier than the others. Hit a good shot, and the tournament is effectively over. But hitting that shot also comes with a potential cost: Read more from Golf.
