Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Justin Thomas is in contention at the PGA Championship. On the final day, the two-time Wanamaker winner fired a final-round 65, taking a five-under par tally into the clubhouse. Because Thomas teed off at 10:55am, however, that meant he had a lot of time to kill, and with winds forecasted to pick up in the afternoon, he had to stay sharp.
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Asked if there was an ideal strategy for staying focused during a long clubhouse wait, Thomas recalled a hilarious story about what not to do, which he learned the hard way at the 2016 Travelers Championship. Gather around and listen to Uncle JT, kiddos.
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“I don’t know if there’s an art [to it], but I can tell you how there isn’t,” Thomas told reporters. “It happened to me in Hartford, Connecticut, one year… I shot like 61 or two and I finished pretty similar – the leaders were on like the middle of the front nine. I had a buddy who was out there watching me and we went in the clubhouse and probably had, like, four or five beers at lunch. Next thing you know, it’s like two-and-a-half hours later and I’m still the leader in the clubhouse. The wind picked up 15-20 miles an hour and the leaders were on, like, 15. Jimmy [Johnson] was caddieing for me at the time and was at a Subway, like, an hour-and-a-half away. I’ve never not wanted to be in a playoff before, but I kinda didn’t want to be in playoff then. That wouldn’t have been a good situation, so I’m not gonna do that, I promise you that [laughs].”
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Lunch beers have caught us all off guard before, but we’re glad Thomas learned his lesson. That day, Russell Knox surged to 14-under to beat Thomas by two, but so far at Aronimink everyone in the field other than leader Aaron Rai is only moving backwards.
Will this be the year a long clubhouse wait finally pays off for Thomas? We’ll have to wait and see, but given the unlikely fashion with which Thomas won his second PGA Championship, storming back from seven strokes down to defeat Will Zalatoris in a playoff at Southern Hills in 2022, we wouldn’t rule anything out.
