Justin Thomas strayed away from some of his typical swing characteristics last season — and it’s a mistake he says he’ll never make again.
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Golf is a fickle game — and Justin Thomas is the latest reminder of that.
Just 20 months ago, Thomas was on top of the golf world. Standing on the 18th green at Southern Hills, he hoisted the Wanamaker Trophy high above his head. For the second time in his career, he was a major champion.
“It’s just so hard to win,” Thomas said later that night. “I legitimately think it’s harder to win now than it was when I first came out on Tour just for the sake of the depth of the Tour.”
That point would only be reinforced in the months to come. Thomas recorded just two top 10s — one at the net-score Tour Championship — for the remainder of the season. His play continued to deteriorate through the rest of the year and into 2023. By the end of the season, he’d hit rock bottom.
Thomas made 15 cuts in 21 events — a solid season for most Tour pros — but registered just four top 10s. And as the fall approached, his place on the Ryder Cup team was in serious doubt. Thomas eventually did suit up for the red, white and blue in Rome, but it didn’t do much to numb the pain of the worst season of his professional career.
So what went wrong? At this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, he opened up on the big mistake that torpedoed his season.
JT’s 1 big mistake
Pros are constantly tinkering with their games, but sometimes those changes can backfire. Consider Thomas as a prime example. As he progressed through the 2023 season, he tried many things to get his game back on track, but in doing so, he got away from his swing DNA.
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“I still know there’s certain characteristics that kind of make my swing what it is, at least when I’m swinging well,” Thomas said. “I got pretty far away from those last year, so it honestly just took some time to kind of get that muscle memory out.”
Thomas has high hands at the top of his backswing, and it results in a downswing that’s steeper than many of his fellow pros. It’s a move that’s served him well throughout his career, but last season, he strayed from that signature. As he watched swing videos of himself, he saw his hands getting “higher and higher.” He didn’t love the look when he watched himself.
“You know, of course I’d love to look back, or I do look back, and I would love to go back in time and wish I didn’t maybe push for some of those changes,” Thomas said. “At the end of the day I think I unfortunately just didn’t like the way that it looked.”
Chasing a move that looked better aesthetically ultimately doomed him. Instead of sticking with what worked, Thomas tried to change the swing that got him to the top of the golf world.
“That’s something that kind of makes my swing what it is,” Thomas said. “I’ve always had very high hands and I’m steeper and whatnot, so that was an example of me chasing something that I probably didn’t need to. My dad and I both kind of, when we got together and talked whether it was last year end of the year, we both realized it was something that we both should have noticed or not pursued. But yeah, like anything, we learn from it and [are] planning to not make that mistake again.”
As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
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