he told<\/a> a scrum of reporters on-site at Bay Hill.\u00a0<\/p>\nHe elaborated \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cJust one of those things will take a little some time and decompressing this afternoon to kind of evaluate it,\u201d the 32-year-old said. \u201cYeah, [Bay Hill\u2019s] a place that it really, really exposes you if you’re not sharp and hit in the wrong places and don’t have a lot of control. It was a lot of everything. I had the lefts going and just pretty miserable first couple of days back, but I guess better get it out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Statistically, he lost more than 13 shots when measuring strokes-gained total, only gaining around the green. And he hit just 10 fairways out of 38 total fairways all week, 16 of 36 greens in regulation and made just 110 feet of putts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As this all unfolded, Thomas began to unravel mentally, too. And he couldn\u2019t wait to get off the course. Halfway through his round on Friday, Thomas turned to his caddie and said he felt that he was getting in the way of Hideki Matsuyama, his playing partner (Matsuyama made the cut on the number).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s grinding and trying to make the cut,\u201d Thomas said, \u201cand it\u2019s like he\u2019s waiting on me and I\u2019ve just felt like I was like humiliating myself out there. I\u2019m, like, \u2018This isn’t really that fun.\u2019 So just really tried to use the [final] nine holes to be productive and get ready for next week. There\u2019s no better place to try things, if you will, than competition. I had zero to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Round 1, Thomas shot 5 over on the back nine. Then, he was 5 over on the front nine Friday. So perhaps shooting 2 over after making the turn in Round 2 was \u2026 progress? At the very least, it was a learning experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMore than anything, I feel it\u2019s [about] just getting mentally ready and mentally in the place of when you\u2019re at your best, if you will, because that was the biggest thing I noticed the last two days is just, mentally, I was so spacey and couldn\u2019t concentrate on what I was doing,\u201d the world No. 14 said.<\/p>\n
Thomas admitted in his pre-tournament press conference that he wasn\u2019t going to push it this week. So he\u2019s cutting himself some slack after his play didn\u2019t go as he hoped. However, that doens\u2019t mean he\u2019s content.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, I\u2019m trying as hard as I can to give myself a little bit of grace of how long I haven\u2019t played and how difficult this sport can be,\u201d he said. \u201cBut at the same time, I expect more out of myself. I don’t think there’s any situation where I feel like I should shoot 14 over par for two days, but it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, Thomas\u2019s attention shifts to next week\u2019s Players Championship, of which he\u2019s a past champion. If there\u2019s one silver lining of having his return cut short, it\u2019s that he has extra time to prepare for the PGA Tour\u2019s flagship event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But if the rust lingers there, too, there\u2019s no need to panic. It\u2019s only a matter of time before he looks like himself again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJ.T.’s been one of the best players in the world for the last 10 years,\u201d McIlroy said, \u201che\u2019ll be fine. He just needs to get sort of sharp again and get into tournament mode and all that stuff. But as long as he got through these two days and didn’t feel any ill effects of the back or the surgery, then I think he\u2019s in a good spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
That seems to be the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy body feels great, which is a huge positive.\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy was befuddled.\u00a0 A few weeks ago, he saw Justin Thomas, who hadn\u2019t played competitively since the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-509046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}