British Open: Justin Thomas trying to fight through slump at Royal Liverpool as season nears end
Justin Thomas is a combined 30-over at major championships this season, and he’s slipping in both the FedExCup and Ryder Cup standings
Justin Thomas is trying to keep his slump in perspective.
Thomas will attempt to rebound from his “humiliating” performance last month at the U.S. Open at the British Open, which marks the final major championship of the season. Thomas comes into the week at Royal Liverpool Golf Club having missed the cut in three of his last five starts, and his best finish at the previous three major championships was a T65 at the PGA Championship.
He’s also sitting at No. 75 in the FedExCup standings, outside of the mark for the first playoff event with three weeks to go, and is on the outside looking in for the Ryder Cup.
“It’s been tough. I’m kind of all over the place,” he told the Golf Channel on Wednesday. “I have times where, ‘This is a part of the process, it’s going to be fine.’ … Then there’s times where it’s just like, ‘This sucks, it’s never going to end.’”
When Thomas has struggled this season, especially lately, it’s been bad.
Thomas missed two consecutive cuts in June and missed the cut at the U.S. Open in Los Angeles with what he described as a “humiliating” second-round 81. He said at that point that it was “definitely the lowest” he’s felt in his career. But perhaps the worst part of that was that he couldn’t pinpoint any one issue. It was just “a little bit of everything.”
Thomas has long been one of the more popular players on the PGA Tour. He’s won 15 times in his career and has two major championships to his name, both at the PGA Championship. But this year at majors, he’s a combined 30-over par and has made the cut just once. He finished T60 at last week’s Genesis Scottish Open, too.
Thomas will tee off just before 10 a.m. ET Thursday alongside Tony Finau and Viktor Hovland at the British Open, which marks one of his last chances to salvage the season. Thomas’ best finish at the British Open came with a T11 run in 2019. He finished T53 last year at St. Andrews.
But instead of panicking or getting down on himself, the 30-year-old is trying to look at the bigger picture. Amid all his recent struggles, he managed to whip out a top-10 finish at the Travelers Championship last month.
“I’m very very fortunate in my, this is now my eighth or so year, that this is my first real something like this I’ve had,” Thomas said. “It’s really not that bad when you think about it. I finished top-10 in an elevated event a couple events ago. I just haven’t been able to put it all together. I just have to somehow stay in that mind frame that this is the week that it’s going to. So we’ll see.”
