MEDINAH, Ill. \u2014 Ten yards to Justin Thomas\u2019 right sat the player he used to be. Jackson Koivun is this Presidents Cup\u2019s curiosity, a 21-year-old who months ago was competing against college kids and now commanded a not-small horde of reporters wondering what it\u2019s like to be golf\u2019s next big thing. Thomas spent much of his press conference answering questions about Koivun, partly because he has been tasked with shepherding the rookie through Medinah, but mostly because you don\u2019t have to squint to see the symmetry. Not long ago Thomas arrived on Team USA as a fledging talent who wanted the moment and wasn\u2019t shy about saying so. Now \u2026 well, Thomas is not old, but he is old enough to watch someone else begin the climb and understand how far he has traveled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be there to help any kid that\u2019s kind of going through what he was going through,\u201d Thomas said about Koivun\u2019s fast assimilation into these ranks. \u201cI think the decision of turning pro and staying in school was hard. He\u2019s a great teammate to his guys, and he didn\u2019t know what to do what was right, what was wrong, so on and so forth. I just wanted him to know if he\u2019s here if he wants somebody to bounce things off of, and I feel like he did that, and a lot of people in his position wouldn\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Thomas was also answering questions because he is his ownself in these events. Few American players over the past 25 years have been as open as Thomas about how much Ryder and Presidents Cups mean to them. He screams and pounds his chest, needles opponents and carries on enough to royally infuriate them. There\u2019s never been much mystery about whether Thomas wants to be there and a case can be made that his enthusiasm has raised the temperature in the American locker room. He\u2019s not just an emotional avatar; he has the best winning percentage of any U.S. player with at least 10 matches at the Presidents Cup with a 10-3-2 record, and despite the Americans\u2019 collective struggle at the Ryder Cup, Thomas has been the aberration at 9-6-2. He gets this dynamic in a way we all think we could if we were in his position.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a record that can\u2019t be explained simply because he\u2019s good, because while he is that, there have been a fair amount of solid Americans that haven\u2019t done what he\u2019s done in these events, so I had to ask what, exactly, makes these weeks so fulfilling for him that we can\u2019t see. And Thomas began by talking about Phil Mickelson.<\/p>\n
Thomas explained he really enjoys the golf side of the week. The camaraderie in an isolating sport, sure; all the guys say that. But to Thomas, it\u2019s the sharing, talking about the craft. It\u2019s a chance to funnel his curiosity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember I would literally wait until team events to ask Phil questions because I knew that he wouldn\u2019t tell me in regular tournament,\u201d Thomas explained. \u201cBut when we got to a team event, I knew he would because we were teammates and he wanted to help me out. I would literally wait and follow him around asking questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an amusing image, Thomas trailing Mickelson around, tugging at his shirt like a kid who has just discovered \u201cwhy\u201d and won\u2019t stop asking. It also may be the best explanation for why Thomas excels in these events, and why he became one of the best players in the sport. Everyone on tour has the talent to be there, yet rising above that company requires the appetite to keep searching and the humility to believe someone else may know something you don\u2019t. Thomas pestered the captains and veterans and peers because he believed there were answers in their head that could make him better and he was willing to risk becoming a nuisance to get them. That instinct translates particularly well to team golf, where understanding how another player thinks can matter as much as understanding your own game.<\/p>\n
And, frankly, that past curiosity explains why he\u2019s presently here.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no need to relitigate that Thomas has not been the same player since winning the 2022 PGA Championship. He was a controversial captain\u2019s pick for the 2023 Ryder Cup team and missed the team entirely in 2024. There was a resurgence last year, when he won at Hilton Head and returned to the Ryder Cup, but back surgery interrupted that momentum. This season brought only two top-10 finishes in 17 starts. He failed to qualify automatically for Medinah and was selected by captain Brandt Snedeker on the belief what we\u2019ve seen from him lately is not the same player we\u2019ll see this week. There is nothing unfair about asking whether past performance should continue buying future opportunities, especially when players with better seasons were left home, and Thomas knows that as well as anyone, asserting that it was weird to be left off in 2024 despite having a better season than he did in 2023.<\/p>\n
He knows these rooms are no longer guaranteed, and that may be part of why his answer Wednesday was revealing. He\u2019s at his best not because he gets to play for the crowds, or to be the hero. He talked about listening.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the 12 best players in the U.S., and we all go about it differently,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cJust how we all do that and get to that is fascinating to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas said earlier this year the thing that impressed him the most about Koivun was his curiosity. \u201cI\u2019m always impressed with kids in college that ask questions and want to learn because that\u2019s very much how I was,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cHe thinks about stuff the right way.\u201d After searching for answers, Thomas is now the one expected to provide them. The best explanation for how he traveled the distance between those 10 yards is that he never stopped asking.<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEDINAH, Ill. \u2014 Ten yards to Justin Thomas\u2019 right sat the player he used to be. Jackson Koivun…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,44,85],"class_list":["post-903534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}