Weekly Recap: Thomas Takes the Trophy

The year was not even three months old and Justin Thomas had already been hit with three haymakers. Granted, one of them was self-inflicted, but it had clearly thrown him off his world-class game.

Thomas spoke in the days leading up THE PLAYERS Championship that the past couple months had been a time to "grow and learn" after he was caught uttering a homophobic slur in Hawaii. That was followed in short order by the passing of his beloved grandfather and the serious accident involving one of his best friends, Tiger Woods. All of it, collectively, had "taken a toll on my golf," he said.

And midway through the second round at TPC Sawgrass, that toll was still taking. Sitting outside the cut line, Thomas steadied on the back nine, then put on a show for the ages on the weekend to capture THE PLAYERS by one stroke over bridesmaid-yet-again Lee Westwood. Seven strokes off the lead entering Saturday, Thomas shot 64-68 to tie the tournament's closing 36-hole scoring mark.

How much had Thomas been affected by all that was going on in his life? Well, he is ranked outside the top 100 in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee after being top-25 the past two years. And he had not had a top-10 in his four starts between Kapalua and Sawgrass, with two of them being missed cuts. That may not sound like much, but you'd have to go back to the middle of 2019 to find four straight starts over which he did not notch a single top-10. When you are a top-5 golfer in the world, the standards are very high. 

The third of those four events was a missed cut at Riviera just three weeks ago. "My head was not in a great place then," Thomas told reporters on Sunday evening, "and, no, I could not imagine turning it around this quickly."

And that was before Woods' accident.

One of the reasons Thomas struggled so mightily was because he admittedly was so shaken by what came out of his mouth at Kapalua. And not because it cost him his Ralph Lauren sponsorship. He was genuinely upset with himself -- which is the correct response. Imagine another top golfer in the same situation, only that golfer shrugged it off as a non-event and continued playing at a high level. It doesn't seem quite right that Thomas was "penalized" for caring.

Maybe what allowed Thomas to find his game so quickly -- quicker than he could have imagined – was that the problem wasn't golf. It wasn't a swing issue or anything like that. Time may heal all wounds, but not all swing problems.

And so, Thomas -- after a short hiatus -- is back up to No. 2 in the world. He notched his 14th PGA Tour win, and he is only the fourth golfer since 1960 to win that many events before turning 28. Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller are the others.

Thomas will take this week off and perhaps return in two weeks for the WGC-Match Play event. But he's really gearing up for the Masters, which is now just four weeks down the road. It's a good thing he found his game before Augusta, because no one playing poorly coming in gets healthy there.

Interestingly, Thomas has played the Masters five times and gotten better every year: T39-T22-T17-T12-4.

After that solo fourth last November, there aren't many ways to improve on that position without winning.

A few days ago, envisioning Thomas winning the Masters was not very realistic. Now, it seems entirely possible.

THE ISLAND GREEN

There were 66 water balls on the week -- 35 of which came on Thursday. Thomas was one of those 35, and he became only the third champion since the Shotlink era began in 2003 to find the water and still win. Matt Kuchar did it in 2012 and Webb Simpson in 2018. The 66 water balls were the second most since 2007. But with more than half coming in the first round, it didn't seem like such a bloodbath this year. 

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Lee Westwood
Saying that Westwood lost 54-hole leads in consecutive weeks is one way to look at it – it's just not the way we choose to. Really, it was a fantastic effort by the 47-year-old once again, and Jordan Spieth fans would declare that Westwood "is back!" Clearly, working with his fiancée as his caddie has been great for Westwood: besides finishing runner-up last week at Bay Hill, he was also runner-up at the DP World Tour Championship last fall. Westwood is now back inside the top 20 in the world for the first time in EIGHT years. He was still in his 30s last time that had happened. He has never been able to win the big one, and THE PLAYERS would've been the biggest win of his career. Later this year, Westwood likely will become the leader in majors played without a win. He currently has 84. Jay Haas has the most with 87. Of course, there are two ways to look at that as well -- we choose to look at longevity as one indicator of greatness.

Bryson DeChambeau
A win and a tie for third in consecutive weeks on two totally different golf courses. It shows that when DeChambeau is healthy both physically and mentally, not much else matters. When that's the case, he can win any time out.

Brian Harman
TPC Sawgrass is not an especially long course. Yet it was fun to see the diminutive left-hander pummel the ball down the fairway and keep up with some of the game's biggest hitters – he was virtually even with Thomas in SG: Off-the-Tee. Harman also led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting. Pretty impressive. He tied for third and moved to 58th in the world – he has now qualified for the WGC-Match Play in two weeks. He still has not qualified for the Masters. Harman has missed only one cut in his past 19 starts going back to last July. This was his second top-10 of 2021, after tying for eighth at the Amex.

Talor Gooch
The 29-year-old Gooch finally appears to be breaking through. He has yet to win on Tour, but this tie for fifth was his third top-5 this season. He's up to a career-best 64th in the OWGR -- good enough to get into the upcoming Match Play. Looking at his strokes-gained stats, Gooch doesn't excel in any one area, yet he also does not have a pronounced weakness.

Paul Casey
After a terrible 2020, the kind of years that make you wonder whether someone who had just turned 40 was heading downhill, Casey has been on fire in 2021. He won in Dubai and has finished no worse than 12th in six starts, including a tie for fifth at Sawgrass. Casey ranked 16th in both SG: Approach and Around-the-Green, and fifth in SG: Putting. Those numbers weren't good enough to win in a world-class field, but they are in many other weeks.

Corey Conners
Another week, another top-10. Conners closed with a 66 to climb the leaderboard. We noted last week how much better he's been putting, and he ranked 18th at Sawgrass. If this continues, Conners will climb a lot higher in the world rankings than where he's at now: a career-best 41st.

Sergio Garcia
Garcia clearly loves him some Sawgrass. He tied for ninth in his 17th straight made cut there. He led the field in SG: Approach. Yeah, he ranked 53rd in SG: Putting and lost strokes all four days. But he actually putted better all week than he had so far this season. Garcia isn't in the top 20 like Westwood, but being ranked 42nd at age 41 is still pretty good.

Victor Perez
The Frenchman is No. 33 in the world yet hadn't played much on the PGA Tour, and he had little success when he did. But he tied for ninth, by far his best result ever in the States. He finished top-25 at the PGA Championship last summer, then made the cut at the Masters and now this. Perez may be getting the hang of playing on PGA Tour tracks, and the Match Play and Augusta are on the horizon.

Doug Ghim
If you happened to see Ghim play only on Sunday the past two weeks, you wouldn't think much, as he shot an 81 at Bay Hill and a 78 at Sawgrass to tumble far outside the top 10 both times. But you can chalk that up to pressure and youth, as he's only 24 years old. Ghim was once the world's top amateur, and his pedigree clearly appears to be showing.

Phil Mickelson
Mickelson made the cut, finished all four rounds at par or better, tied for 35th and crept back inside the top 100 of the OWGR. All in all, it was a fantastic week. Mickelson will be among the biggest names in this week's weak field for The Honda Classic.
 
Rickie Fowler
Fowler missed another cut, has fallen to 81st in the world and therefore will not qualify for the Match Play in two weeks. He has a few remaining options to qualify for the Masters -- none of them good. He's in the field for the Honda event this week, and he will probably need something like a top-10 finish -- maybe better -- to crack the top 50 in the world rankings. His other options are to play in the Dominican Republic opposite the Match Play, though even a win might not move him into the top 50 with so few world-rankings points to be had. The final option is to win the Valero Texas Open the week before Augusta.

WEEKEND WATCHERS

So many top golfers missed the cut: No. 5 (at the time) Xander Schauffele, No. 7 Tyrrell Hatton, No. 9 Patrick Cantlay, No. 10 Webb Simpson, No. 11 Rory McIlroy, No. 13 Viktor Hovland, No. 14 Tony Finau, No. 21 Tommy Fleetwood, No. 23 Hideki Matsuyama, No. 30 Scottie Scheffler, No. 35 Kevin Kisner, No. 37 Marc Leishman, No. 38 Max Homa, No. 48 Gary Woodland, No. 91 Henrik Stenson. In a quality field with almost 100 players missing the cut, some of this was bound to happen. It just seemed excessive this week. 

Let's take a closer look at some of those players:

McIlroy: Days after saying he was a bit lost on the golf course and not having any answers, you wonder what his mindset is going into the Masters. As Thomas showed, things can change quickly. But it doesn't sound promising for McIlroy in the near term.

Schauffele: After four runners-up in eight starts, he's now gone T15, T39, MC. It was his first missed cut in more than a year, since Torrey Pines in 2020. A very small sample size, yes, but when a guy suddenly makes a sharp turn, it bears watching.

Hovland: He played for the fifth time in six weeks, and the only week off was when he traveled home from Saudi Arabia. He blew up on the weekend at Bay Hill and then went out of THE PLAYERS. Probably just needed a break.

Kisner: His results in 2021 have been underwhelming, to say the least. He tied for 24th at Kapalua – but there were only 30-something guys in the field. Then T32-T41-T36-MC. His beloved Match Play is coming at just the right time. He's the defending champion from 2019.

Woodland: He has now fallen out of the top-50 for the first time since early 2018. Following his missed cut, his most recent 15 tournaments have gone like this: 7 MCs, 1 WD, 1 top-25, 0 top-10s. He said he is fully healthy after back woes last year, but obviously something is amiss.

Stenson: He opened with an 85 and that was that. He has now fallen to 97th in the world and is about to tumble out of the top-100 for the first time in almost a decade. Stenson is now 44 and, other than winning the limited-field Hero World Challenge in 2019, he hasn't had so much as a worldwide top-10 in 19 months.