This doesn’t sound like it should be noteworthy: a 15-time PGA Tour winner still in his prime holds the first-round lead in a tournament.
But Justin Thomas has been fighting some things for a while.
The 31-year-old has the first-round lead at the Genesis Scottish Open after shooting 8-under 62 Thursday, his first such lead in 781 days.
“It’s always good to get off to a good start, and even better to get off to a great one,” Thomas said. “I felt like I was in great control of everything. Just when I missed it, I missed it in the right spots and had a lot of really quality shots. On those 4-, 5-, 6-footers to kind of make something out of them, I stole a couple with some long or mid-range putts.”
Not since the first round of the 2021 Northern Trust at Liberty National has Thomas held a first-round lead; he did that day after a 63 gave him a share of the lead with Jon Rahm—who of course isn’t on Tour anymore. Thomas finished T4.
His last win was the 2022 PGA Championship, where Thomas didn’t lead after any of the first three rounds and then found himself in a playoff when Mito Pereira double bogeyed the 72nd hole at Southern Hills, losing the lead and missing the playoff by a shot. Thomas defeated Will Zalatoris in the three-hole aggregate playoff for his second PGA title.
Since then Thomas hasn’t found consistency or a victory. The 26th-ranked player in the Official World Golf Ranking failed to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs last year, and though he’ll make it this year on the strength of five finishes of T8 or better, he also has missed cuts at the Players, Masters and U.S. Open. He finished T8 at the PGA at Valhalla, to the delight of the Kentucky fans.
“I think it’s, like a lot of us, start putting a little too much pressure on ourselves and I sometimes want it a little bit too bad,” Thomas said earlier this season. “So just stay patient and just trying to let it come to me and let it happen, and hopefully it happens sooner rather than later.”
So far it’s happening at the Renaissance Club, where Thomas made eight birdies and zero bogeys to take the lead by one over Sungjae Im. When the Kentucky native finds his gear, no one goes lower more often: stats guru Justin Ray noted that Thursday was Thomas’s 12th round on Tour of 62 or lower, three more than any other player since the start of 2015. He also has 54 rounds with eight or more birdies/eagles since the start of 2014, six more than the next player (Jordan Spieth).
“I’m confident when I get in that mode,” Thomas said. “When you drive it well like I did for the most part today, you have a lot of short clubs, and I see nothing but the pin. You have opportunities to get the ball close with some slopes, but if I have a good number, for the most part I’m trying to figure out how I can hit it as close as possible. I’m not scared to do so.”