Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Justin Thomas is in contention at the PGA Championship. On Sunday, the two-time Wanamaker winner fired a final-round 65, taking five-under par into the clubhouse. Because Thomas tee’d off at 10:55 a.m., however, that meant he had a lot of time to kill, and with winds forecasted to pick up in the afternoon, he had to stay sharp. Asked if there was an ideal strategy for staying focused during a long clubhouse wait, Thomas recalled a hilarious story about what NOT to do, which he learned the hard way at the 2016 Travelers Championship. Gather around and listen to uncle JT, kiddos.
“I don’t know if there’s an art [to it], but I can tell you how there isn’t,” Thomas told reporters. “It happened to me in Hartford, Ct. one year … I shot like 61 or two and I finished pretty similar—the leaders were on like the middle of the front nine. I had a buddy who was out there watching me and we went in the clubhouse and probably had like four or five beers at lunch. Next thing you know, it’s like two and a half hours later and I’m STILL the leader in the clubhouse. The wind picked up 15-20 miles an hour and the leaders were on like 15. Jimmy [Johnson] was caddying for me at the time and was at a subway like an hour and a half away. I’ve never not wanted to be in a playoff before, but I kinda didn’t want to be in playoff then. That wouldn’t have been a good situation, so I’m NOT gonna do that, I promise you that [laughs].”
Lunch beers have caught us all off guard before, but we’re glad Thomas learned his lesson. That day, Russell Knox surged to 14-under to beat Thomas by two, but so far at Aronimink the field is only moving backwards. Will this be the year a long clubhouse wait finally pays off for Thomas? We’ll have to wait and see, but given the unlikely fashion with which Thomas won his last PGA Championship, storming back from seven strokes down to defeat Will Zalatoris in a playoff at Southern Hills, we wouldn’t rule anything out.
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