{"id":517079,"date":"2026-03-06T01:05:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T01:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/517079\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T01:05:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T01:05:22","slug":"justin-thomas-return-spoiled-with-bogey-filled-opening-round-at-api","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/517079\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Thomas’ return spoiled with bogey-filled opening round at API"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Thomas offered a pretty blunt assessment of his 7-over 79 at Bay Hill Club and Lodge, where he played his first competitive round since back surgery in November<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of sucks, to be honest,\u201d said Thomas, who has been playing in TGL events with Atlanta Drive GC leading up to Thursday\u2019s opening round at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Thomas enters Round 2 tied for last with Pierceson Coody and Aldrich Potgieter after making six total bogeys and recording two double bogeys on his back nine in Orlando.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously not how I expected it to go,\u201d Thomas told reporters. \u201cBut the rust aspect kind of unfortunately was a little bit of what I anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is what it is,\u201d he added. \u201cIt got pretty dicey this afternoon. The greens had a bit of a Friday afternoon kind of feel to \u2018em. But everybody else is out here playing the same place I am, they just played a lot better. So, yeah, go try to figure a couple things out and just do better tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Arnold<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Tee times, pairings and how to watch the second round of the PGA Tour\u2019s signature event, the Arnold Palmer Invitational.<\/p>\n

Thomas returns to Bay Hill on Friday, where he will be paired again with Hideki Matsuyama. They are set to tee off at 10:05 a.m. ET.<\/p>\n

Thomas\u2019 last win on Tour came almost a year ago at the RBC Heritage in April when he defeated Andrew Novak in a playoff to earn his 16th victory as a pro.<\/p>\n

The 2022 PGA Championship winner is in danger of missing the 36-hole cut where the top 50 players and ties (and anyone within 10 strokes of the lead) will qualify for the weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a hard time gauging the speed,\u201d said Thomas, who blamed his putting for being the most rusty part of his game. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut just a lot of little stuff,\u201d he added. \u201cI could not keep my concentration for the life of me on the back nine. I just had a couple times I had to back off because I just would kind of walk into the shot and have no idea what I was even trying to do. It was good to play, honestly, an 18 hole pro-am yesterday for me to get used to being out here that long and trying to concentrate that long. I haven\u2019t done that in a while. But still no excuse to make that many mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Thomas offered a pretty blunt assessment of his 7-over 79 at Bay Hill Club and Lodge, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-517079","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\/517079","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=517079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}