MEMPHIS — With his best season in three years featuring a pair of runner-up finishes and his first win since the 2022 PGA Championship, Justin Thomas has to be happy with his play in 2025. Sort of happy, anyway. Satisfied, well, that’s another matter.
Thomas, the 2017 FexEx Cup champion, enters this week’s opening PGA Tour playoff event, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, ranked fifth in the points standings and guaranteed a three-week run through to the Tour Championship in Atlanta.
Asked if he was happy with a year in which he won the RBC Heritage for his 16th PGA Tour title and has risen to fourth in the World Ranking, Thomas smiled and hesitated slightly.
“I think so,” he said haltingly. “I don’t know. I definitely know three ways I could make it a lot happier and feel a lot better about it.”
He was referring to the three playoff events. Yes, he’d like to win them all. Or at least have a chance to win them.
“I’m definitely not going to make any judgments or assess anything for the time being with three big events left and three tournaments I feel like I could have a good chance to go out and try to win and put myself in contention,” Thomas, 32, explained. “That’s the goal, just to try to do that each week. I’m teeing it up these next three, and hopefully we can try to get a couple of them and ultimately the FedExCup.
“It’s hard to say right now but ask me again in three weeks, hopefully.”
The winner here at TPC Southwind in 2020, Thomas has another goal he’d like to achieve in the next three weeks, and it relates to a fourth big event on his calendar—the 45th Ryder Cup in September at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, N.Y. The Kentucky native is seventh in the U.S. team points standings. The top six automatically qualify for captain Keegan Bradley’s team. Thomas is a shoo-in for a wild-card pick and his fourth appearance for America.
That’s not good enough, in his estimation.
“I’m thinking about it, but in terms of form and playing well for it, first and foremost, I really, really want to earn … I want to be in that top six,” he said. “Just for me personally, it just would mean a lot to me to get that done because having been picked or having to rely on a pick a couple times, I definitely like the level of low stress and just the sense of calm knowing that you’re qualified versus waiting for that phone to ring.
“I’m obviously thinking about it a lot,” he added. “But in terms of actual golf, I have plenty between now and then to focus on.”
Indeed, he does. And that begins at 10:45 a.m. EDT when he tees off—somewhat conveniently, it seems—with Russell Henley, who is fourth in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings with two weeks remaining in the qualifying process.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
