Justin Thomas’ hypothesis is already paying off. Earlier this week at the Fortinet Championship, he said he was going to take back more control of his golf swing, and that while his father, Mike, would remain his swing coach, he likely would not be as omnipresent as he was before.
After opening with a 69 on Thursday, when he didn’t hit it that well off the tee, he put on one of the five best driving performances in the field on Friday en route to a 67 that has him in the top five on the leaderboard halfway through the second round.
He attributed his 67 to a tremendous driving performance and some small adjustments from the end of the first round that carried over into the second.
“Even as a golfer, we’re the first to blame anything and everything else, but it was me,” said Thomas. “I took a video afterwards. I called my dad when I was going to the range. … I could tell in one video I was getting stuck underneath it. I could feel it some out there, and I feel like the adjustment I made on the fly yesterday to at least get it in the house, and so I had a good thought just from a little 10-minute range session yesterday afternoon that I felt like could get me through today, and it worked pretty well.”
After hitting just three of 14 fairways in Round 1, he hit eight of them in Round 2, which led to him hitting 17 of 18 greens in regulation and making six birdies. It was that swing ownership that led to a shift in the way he hit it on Friday.
“[Fixing my swing on the fly on Thursday is] basically exactly what I meant,” he added. “I felt like there could have been some times maybe last year or in the past of, ‘I’ve got to get in the house and figure out what dad sees and what’s going on,’ as opposed to, ‘You know, we’re going to most likely see the same thing.’
“He may word it differently that could resonate a little bit more,” Thomas continued. “Like I said to media this week and to other people, it’s just that that’s a part of what I think has made me as successful as I’ve been in my career thus far, is I’ve been very good at adjusting on the fly. I just feel like yesterday was a really good example of that, of just getting it around when I didn’t have much and shooting a decent score.”
This mini-surge comes at a fortuitous time for Thomas, who will head to Rome in a week for the Ryder Cup. Considered a controversial captain’s pick by some, J.T. has seemingly found a bit of confidence ahead of the 44th Ryder Cup, where his team will lean on him as its emotional and spiritual captain.
If his driver continues to work like this — don’t sleep on the fact that he was in the top 10 in strokes gained on approach shots as well on Friday — then he may play more of a role than previously presumed. It’s just one day of great play from somebody who has not had a lot of them over the last year, but also it could lead to so much more than that.
“I have a lot of belief in myself that I’m not as far off as I think,” Thomas said earlier this week. “All it takes is one week, one stretch, one whatever you want to call it that could just completely flip everything and nobody even talks or remembers it anymore.”