Justin Thomas posted a solid opening round of 70 at The Open Championship on Thursday.
It is quite incredible to think that Thomas has not had one single top-10 finish in his career at The Open, given his ability to keep his ball flight down and his exceptional imagination around the greens.
Royal Birkdale was playing firm and fast on day one of The Open.
The conditions were fairly benign earlier on in the day, but as the wind got up, it became extremely difficult for the players to get close to the pins.
Justin Thomas managed to keep the disasters off his scorecard, and ended day one at The Open with 14 pars, two birdies and two bogeys.
Thomas has struggled to find his very best form since returning to action in March following back surgery at the end of last year.
Justin Thomas says if he appreciates links golf or hates it after day one at The Open
The 32-year-old from Kentucky was actually heavily fancied heading into the week at Royal Birkdale.
His ability to move his ball both ways, flatten out his trajectory and use a variety of different shots around the greens makes him ideally suited to links golf, on paper at least.
However, as mentioned earlier, his record just doesn’t back that up.
After shooting 70 on day one of The Open, Thomas spoke to reporters about his round, and he responded when asked whether he actually appreciates links golf, or hates it.
“Probably depends on how I played,“ he said.
“It’s not something you’d want to do every week, but I think that I would venture to guess the majority of us, if we could choose how an Open Championship would be, we would probably choose it like this.
“It just makes it fun. It requires a lot of thinking, a lot of strategies, a lot of ways to play, a lot of discipline. It’s unique.“
Justin Thomas on ‘unique’ links challenge
Thomas was asked by one reporter what the most unique part of the challenge was on Thursday at Birkdale.
“That’s a good question,“ the American replied.
“I’d say — I mean, committing is really a tough part. 18 was a good example for me. I felt like I didn’t know what club to hit. It’s like, it’s a 5-wood — I ended up hitting 5-wood, 5-wood. I had 252 in. I felt like the 3-wood had nowhere to go, it was going into the bunkers, and I felt like driver didn’t really have anywhere to go. I felt like 5-wood with the crosswind put me with my best chance of hitting the fairway.
“So I think it really is just committing because I think the crosswinds when fairways are this firm are so difficult to hit.
“That was kind of a big goal I had for myself and with Rev this week is just helping me commit and helping me just be confident in what I’m doing because I think I have a lot of shots and I have a lot of — I see a lot of shots, so sometimes committing over here is the hardest part for me.“
Justin Thomas definitely has the game to contend at an Open Championship. Now the onus is on him to step up and deliver when it matters most.
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