PGA Championship 2022: Justin Thomas shows composure to take advantage of precious opportunity to win second place
TULSA, Okla. – The big championships are very precious. There were about 550 individual bids to win the biggest events of the year but only 4 trophies were awarded in as many months. Less than 1% of those who develop it in four majors annually are completely satisfied.
For a while at the 2022 PGA Championship, it seemed like someone would walk away not only satisfied but shocked. Going into the final round on Sunday at Southern Hills Country Club, which has hosted a major tournament for the eighth time, the four top four – Mito Pereira, Matt Fitzpatrick, Will Zalatoris and Cameron Young – come together. to not win the PGA Tour and only five major top 10 in their careers.
A winning Sunday would be life-changing for any of the four. For three-quarters of that group, their Korn Ferry Tour days are still so fresh that capturing this epic moment is sure to feel like you’re trying to get water with your hands.
Justin Thomas knows this.
After shooting 67-67-74 with a dizzying swing with less mechanical movement than artistic arrangement, he came back seven strokes to advance to Sunday’s final round. However, he still hoped for more than he thought.
Thomas said: “I just remember how difficult it was, and I remember how difficult it was to win. “So I know I’ll be worried, and I know they’ll feel the same way.”
JT played late Thursday and early Friday in a wave that was two strokes harder than the other. He played golf so well the first two days that he beat everyone but one player in that draw by 5 strokes.
The whole thing is a performance. Thomas moved his ball with so many balls at the start of the week it looked as if Jim “Bones” Mackay was controlling it with a remote. Most modern players choose to draw pictures by numbers. As Thomas reaches for the multitude of brushes at his disposal, you too can clean up space in the museum.
However, he still has to go through the weekend because of that tough draw. It will get worse before it gets better. His No.74 on Saturday left him in 2nd under and T7, behind Pereira, who leads 54 holes seven. Thomas was buried on the chessboard. It seems like one of the really surprising few chances he had to win a major was gone before it fully materialized.
Thomas was one of the last men in the game on Saturday night, but he was more upbeat than expected after the 74 appeared to have torn one of the few valuable runs at another major title. from some of the best golfers in professional golf.
He hit the ball for a while and got words of encouragement from Bones, who told JT he needed to stop being self-deprecating. Thomas seemed to remember that. He ended his Saturday by signing one flag after another for the long-suffering kids who had been waiting all day for his autograph.
Thomas said: “I leave here in a great mind. “I think [I was] Last player here. … It’s so peaceful. It’s almost as strange as how beautiful it is on the outside, and there aren’t many times after shooting 4 times on a Saturday of a major that I’ve left in mind as good as I have [here]. ”
Thomas started off stellar on Sunday and shot an even 35 out of nine ahead. After placing par at 10 and holding at 2 under for the week, Data Golf pegged his winning probability at 0.4%. In other words, it would be a miracle.
Then something happened that reminded everyone of his last big win, the 2017 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. JT putt from 65 feet in 11th place, bowed to the crowd and took off his hat. It was a red shot from a birdie on his final round of the last time he won the Wanamaker Trophy.
Thomas also hit 12 and then missed a birdie at 15, which could have knocked the house down. At the time, it felt like a shot that he would look back on with regret.
A bird flying up and down at par-4 17 can be steered – that Bones said tougher than it looks – get down 5 from JT with a mighty 18 waiting. Thomas tore that high-head mower off the tee and hit a championship iron into the pin in his right hand.
“It was amazing,” Thomas said. “I really don’t know, how to describe it other than that. I mean, the irons hit the 18s by the rules, that’s why I play golf. Like, that’s it. That’s why I practice. Every hour and everything and time put in, you want to be in that situation. are in dispute.
“It’s hard to explain, but it’s a kind of whole-body chill.”
Thomas somehow missed a shot that felt costly again. He plays 17 and 18 as well, but he doesn’t know if his third 67 in four innings will suffice. JT made his way to the scoring tent – where he rested his feet on the table as a club captain under the age of 5 – to watch the stage unfold behind him on the pitch.
Just before moving to a more private area to watch the end of the tournament, Thomas looked up and said to no one in particular, “Hope for the best, man.”
He got it.
Zalatoris finished 1 ahead of nine with a bird clutch in the last to chirp in the house with Thomas in 5th bottom.
After Pereira, who played the first seven holes of the first nine rounds, left a birdie on 17 in a short shootout, the 54-hole lead in the 18th game needed a goal to win. His steering drive on the final hole of the tournament looked like a swing and caused someone I was traveling with to say, “Looks like he got an electric shock on impact.”
Pereira made a double heartache bogey on the 18th and missed the playoffs entirely.
Things move quickly at the end of the major.
Thomas was taken to the opposite side of the driving school, where the players had been hitting all week. No divot found.
CBS broadcaster Colt Knost fed him one game at a time once the game was over in the regulations. From there, he was loaded onto a trolley and moved to the 13th tee, where the three-hole composite playoff began.
Meanwhile, an impromptu parade broke out. The lyrics of “JT! JT!” mixed with that peculiar smell you only get in the majors – a combination of mud and sweat and hamburger smoke. It’s settled in the playoffs.
Thomas and Zalatoris birdie at par-5 on the 13th. JT’s father, Mike, appeared poised to raise the roof for the crowd that had surrounded that green.
Just like that, a mediocre major suddenly became a classic.
As Thomas walked to number 17, an audience member shouted, “Mom, that’s a bad man.” That is prior to JT took the tournament’s hit on its second-to-last hole: a high-hanging rocket flipped itself, hitting the front of the green and 34 feet from the trophy. He made two birdie serves while Zalatoris made a par.
How Bones got into JT’s ear on the 18th tee That famous Draymond Green-Kevin Durant GIFand Thomas put in another punch for the hardest hole of the week.
The third-biggest 54-hole comeback in major championship history – and the biggest of this century – is complete. Zalatoris took off his cap and clapped his hands from afar while Thomas showed his usual composure.
“I just think it’s hard to win,” Thomas said when asked about his feelings afterward. “Like, yeah. I think it’s harder to win now than when I was on the Tour the first time. … I think it’s easy to start letting some doubt creep in and sort of like that. [think], like, ‘Okay, what happens? When will it happen? To be it will happen? ‘
“I just turned 18 in the playoffs, and I know it’s not over, but I was looking up and I wanted to get in because you don’t know when and if it’s going to happen again. It’s a tough one. believe, that cool feeling you just want to enjoy it.”
Majors are precious. There are very few of them and so many great players are competing to bring them home. As Thomas headed into Sunday’s closing game, first team leader Rory McIlroy told CBS Sports that “rejection” was the main emotion he experienced after finishing eighth in the rankings. in the end and let your efforts to win slip away.
Thomas learned that there was little chance in the years between his 2017 PGA championship and this tournament, so he got emotional on the 18th. After you win your first major at 24 , you always feel as if they will begin to flow. And then they don’t.
The past five years have brought a host of absurd champions. Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, Collin Morikwa, Dustin Johnson, Hideki Matsuyama, Brooks Koepka, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau have all claimed at least one win since Thomas won the last – several of them. more than one.
In their careers, even star golfers can only get a handful of runs on Sunday afternoons at major championships. If they’re lucky.
As Thomas headed to the clubhouse after finishing 275th in regulation, he passed the American PGA staffers in charge of handling the oversized Wanamaker Trophy.
The athlete in his polo shirt and vest carried this 28-inch-tall, 27-pound trophy as Thomas walked up beside him. The trophy is encased in a protective cover of green velvet. It’s not time yet.
In 20 minutes, it looks like that moment will be a metaphor for Thomas’s day and his entire career.
He’s been playing really well for several years without a big game to show off. He played brilliantly for three days in a row and so poorly in one day. The men carrying the trophy ran down the hill towards those still ahead of Thomas on the leaderboard who had yet to finish.
No one took that trophy out, and JT won the right to the knockout round.
When he stepped up to number 18 on Sunday for the second time, Wanamaker was out for all to see. It reflects the setting sun in the Oklahoma sky, which last saw the Tiger Woods major championship in 2007.
Thomas was still a teenager then, and the idea that he and Tiger would one day become best friends was certainly a pipe dream for him at the time. Now, they are the last two golfers to win the professional championship at Southern Hills.
As Thomas made his way through the crowd surrounding number 18, the uncovered trophy was still shining and waiting to be held.
JT has acquired another valuable major.
