Justin Thomas was typically blunt earlier the week about he’s played in this season’s majors. The two-time PGA Championship winner missed the cut last week in the U.S. Open at Oakmont after not reaching the weekend in the PGA at Quail Hollow. At the Masters, he mustered only a T-36.
“I still get pretty pissed off about it and … it weighs on me more than it should.”
It was looking as if Thomas had shaken off those concerns over the first two rounds of the signature Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Conn. By opening 67-64, he got into the final group on Saturday with the man who has had little to fret over. This seemed to be just another weekend of heading toward a possible trophy lift for Scottie Scheffler, the reigning PGA champ and World No. 1 who’s won three of his last five starts.
What happened in the third round, no one saw coming.
Scheffler, on his 29th birthday, suffered a triple bogey on the opening hole and a double on the eighth to quickly fall off the first page of the leaderboard. Thomas was cruising along at even par through 12 until he hit a wall with his driving and chipping on the second-easiest hole of the day.
Pissed off? No doubt, after Thomas wrote down a quadruple-bogey 9 on the par-5 13th.
"FORE!" 🔊
Crazy club throw from Justin Thomas 😮 pic.twitter.com/ae6whgEugm
— Golf on CBS ⛳ (@GolfonCBS) June 21, 2025
It started on the tee on the 509-yard hole, with the 16-time tour winner driving out of bounds on the left, with his club release nearly hitting a marshal. He re-teed and found the fairway, but then Thomas’ fourth shot came up short and barely stayed above the water in some rough. The green was steep in front of Thomas and his first chip wasn’t firm enough, and the ball rolled back down. He lined up again, and the same thing happened. He was now laying 7. Finally, Thomas got his chip up to leave himself seven feet, but misfired on that to make the quad.
The mishap dropped Thomas from T-5 to T-21, and that’s both a lot of money and a lot of points lost in the last of the season’s $20 million signature events.
Scheffler made his triple-bogey 7 at the first when his greenside-bunker third shot went over the green and his next chip came back to him. He missed a 16-foot putt for double bogey.
Through 16 holes, Scheffler and Thomas were both three over on a day when Russell Henley shot 61 and leader Tommy Fleetwood scored 63.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com