A couple of weeks ago, I caught a late-night replay of the 2014 PGA Championship’s final round. The four-way melee among Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, Phil Mickelson, and Henrik Stenson was good enough when it happened, but in its own way, it was even more compelling six years later.
At the time, their showdown seemed certain to be a precursor to further greatness for all four players: McIlroy closing an historic season, Fowler in the thick of the hunt for the fourth major in a row, Mickelson seemingly showing no problem keeping up with bigger hitters just half his age, and Stenson hammering long irons and fairway woods with merciless precision.
Yet in the five full seasons that followed, just one of them earned a major championship — and it was Stenson, perhaps the fourth-most obvious choice of them all. No one in their right mind would have suggested that McIlroy’s come-from-behind victory at Valhalla would be his last major for at least six years. It seemed impossible: a generational talent on a juggernaut’s pace.
But in golf, nothing is certain, most of all when it seems so.
All of which is to say that Justin Thomas’ past performance is no guarantee of future results. It could all disappear for him tomorrow, as it did with McIlroy and other greats before him.
But absent a historic withering, Thomas’ time is now.
Thomas’ three-shot win at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational — his third in his past 14 events, and his 13th career PGA Tour victory — was a bullhorn to the golfing world: if any doubt lingered, Thomas is the greatest American golfer under age 30, and one of the small handful of players that anyone hoping to win a world-class event must go through. His days of being known best as Jordan Spieth’s “good friend” are long gone: Thomas has won at least once each year since 2016, establishing the sort of staying power for which Spieth would now kill. Thomas’ ball-striking is among the world’s best; his short game is under-appreciated; and when his putting is merely good enough (as it was in Memphis, where he ranked 55th of 78 in strokes gained putting), he is a force that few players can weather.
And now, with two multi-win years in his past three seasons and unmistakably at the height of his powers, Thomas finds himself at a remarkable moment of opportunity.
Beginning with this week’s PGA Championship at Harding Park, an unprecedented seven major championships will go down over the next 11 months. And with the sole, arguable exception of Royal St. George’s, which will host the Open Championship in July 2021, they all fit Thomas’ game: the two Masters at Augusta National (where he has never missed a cut and has improved every year, including 2019’s T12 finish), plus long, ball-striking bonanzas at Winged Foot (the 2020 U.S. Open), Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course (the 2021 PGA Championship), and Torrey Pines (the 2021 U.S. Open).
Supernovas don’t burn for long, but with so many majors coming in under a year, Thomas’ hot streak doesn’t have to. If he can maintain anything close to the level of play he’s showed already in 2020 (Thomas has four top-10 finishes in the six events he’s played since the PGA Tour restarted play in June), then he’ll be a threat everywhere. If Thomas cashes in on even just a couple of those opportunities, then he can cement his legacy as an all-timer before he even turns 29.
To be sure, Thomas is no shoo-in at any of the seven majors between Harding Park and Royal St. George’s. His putting frequently leaves a lot to be desired, and his work off the tee on Sundays is occasionally erratic. But even that is overstated: Thomas was dinged for “a few crooked tee shots down the stretch” during his final round in Memphis, but he still finished the round ranked fourth in strokes gained off the tee. Moreover, good iron play can atone for many sins, and Thomas is showing that in spades: so far in 2020, he leads the Tour in both strokes gained tee-to-green and approaching the green. If there’s a golf course anywhere in the world that doesn’t reward great iron shots, then that course isn’t hosting a major in the next 11 months.
That window will not be Thomas’ only opportunity to pile up multiple majors, of course. But it would be hard to imagine him arriving at a better opportunity. And fair or not, that is the standard by which Thomas’ career will be judged. His 2017 PGA Championship deserves respect, but Thomas has shown the sort of rare talent that history will view as underachieved if he finishes with fewer than three major championships.
We are years away from a moment that merits talk of unmet potential — but that isn’t the point. Harding Park offers Thomas a ripe chance to silence that conversation before it ever begins, and to begin amassing a Hall of Fame resume’ worthy of his abilities. As the 2014 PGA Championship reminds us, expectations never disappear, and yet the future makes no promises.
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