This place has a habit of making major champions lose control<\/a>. On Friday, Thomas\u2019s patience was tested once more, this time by a run-in with a rules official during his second nine. <\/p>\nThe pace of play is causing real problems here, caused in a large part by logistics at the venue. The 1st and 10th holes share a tee box on this compact site and the lengthy par-3 eighth hole is incredibly close to the 9th. With the cross winds adding indecision into the mix, it is a perfect storm for five-and-a-half-hour rounds.<\/p>\n
But Thomas and his former Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley were left surprised and feeling singled out after they were put on the clock due to their own group\u2019s slow play. The duo were seen remonstrating with an official in a cart on the fairway about their warning for losing ground on the group in front.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just didn\u2019t really agree with it,\u201d Thomas told TG when asked about the incident. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard because it\u2019s the whole time par [length of time allocated on each hole] thing. What is time par? \u201cHow can time par on this course be the same when it\u2019s blowing 25 and the pins are tough than if it\u2019s not? And does time par change every day? There\u2019s just so many factors that go into it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were behind. That wasn\u2019t our issue or being annoyed by it, it\u2019s just the fact that we weren\u2019t holding up the group behind us. They were about \u2013 it seemed like every time we were on the green, they were on the tee and so on and so forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hard part, to me, with the whole pace of play thing is that there\u2019s so much that goes into golf, and there\u2019s so much that goes into hole to hole in terms of, are you hitting it close, are you able to tap it in, or you have to mark it, stuff like that, are you holding the group up or are you not, to where it\u2019s very hard to make that call. And we just didn\u2019t agree with it, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we got taken off and a hole later we were caught up. So it goes to our point of why we didn\u2019t think we should of [been on the clock], but it is what it is. <\/p>\n
Thomas was not perturbed by the surprise warning as he played his last six-holes in two-under par. <\/p>\n
\u201cI backed off on my first shot being on the clock even,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s so hard out here and the last thing I\u2019m going to do is make a mistake because I feel like I\u2019m rushing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we were for some reason to get in a position where we were getting bad times and we were continuing to be on [the clock], I would have had more discussions with the rules officials to kind of plead my case. But it\u2019s hard enough. I\u2019m not going to sit out there and take two minutes, like that\u2019s disrespectful to the field and everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to rush and hit a shot that isn\u2019t right. So just kind of went about my business and just was ready to play when it was my turn like I feel like I do normally.\u201d<\/p>\n
So how does Thomas plan to keep a lid on things as he continues to be tested in these brutal conditions?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lot easier to be patient when you\u2019re under par and around the lead versus if you\u2019re two or three over,\u201d he smiled. \u201cThat\u2019s when it\u2019s really hard to be patient. That\u2019s where I\u2019m very proud of myself this morning, being two-over after three and not forcing it, not feeling like I had to birdie every hole to get it back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen a leaderboard like this in my life, so bunched. Just out of curiosity \u2013 I know there\u2019s not a 10-shot rule here \u2013 but I was laughing last night looking at it. It would have been 148 people that wouldn\u2019t have made the cut if there was a 10-shot rule! It\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Thomas has put himself right in the mix at PGA Championship. But not before a disagreement with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-587558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}