Justin Thomas will return to competition at next week\u2019s Arnold Palmer Invitational.<\/p>\n
Thomas revealed the news during Monday night\u2019s TGL doubleheader, in which Thomas participated in the first of two matches. It marked his first competitive action, though indoors, since undergoing a microdiscectomy on Nov. 13.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty close to normal,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say this is a normal setting or situation tonight. It\u2019s a lot of stop and starts and whatnot. But at least when I\u2019ve been hitting the last week or so, I feel like it\u2019s been in a very similar spot to normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas, whose last tournament was the Ryder Cup in September, added that he\u2019s been practicing normally for at least a month, but he\u2019s still expecting some rust when he tees it up at Bay Hill, where he\u2019s finished T-49 (2015), T-21 (2023), T-12 (2024) and T-36 (2025).<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say it\u2019ll just be a lot of little stuff,\u201d Thomas said. \u201c\u2026 I\u2019m trying to play a lot more, but I\u2019ll still run into stuff here and there of just situations I haven\u2019t been in in a while. It was my first time playing, hitting it in a fairway bunker, and I\u2019m like, I haven\u2019t hit a fairway bunker shot in like four months or something like that. Just trying to play and get out there as often as I can. Different winds, different grasses, different lies, different scenarios.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, I obviously want to and would love to play well next week, but I\u2019m also understanding that it\u2019ll be, what, almost five, six months since I\u2019ve played a competitive tournament, so I\u2019m not exactly expecting anything great. But at least everybody else will be struggling with me at Bay Hill, so that\u2019ll make me feel a little bit better hopefully.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas joked Monday that, \u201cI can\u2019t believe I got a back surgery before my dad with how his back is.\u201d But he\u2019s still forecasting \u201canother 12-15 years of great golf ahead of me.\u201d His swing didn\u2019t change much.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no reason to look backward, just look forward,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cThe same D.N.A., hopefully just better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Thomas will return to competition at next week\u2019s Arnold Palmer Invitational. Thomas revealed the news during Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-496793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}