Controversial Ryder Cup Captain's Pick Justin Thomas in a 'Better Place' on Eve of Matches

The two-time major champ had a lackluster season but played well in a recent tuneup and has the backing of teammates including likely partner Jordan Spieth.

ROME — The lowest point came in June at the U.S. Open, where Justin Thomas believed his golf game was about to finally turn around, only for him to miss the cut by a mile.

"I shot a thousand and almost finished last," Thomas said of the tournament at Los Angeles Country Club, where he shot a second-round 81.

The reality point came a few days after the Wyndham Championship in early August. Thomas needed a good week there in order to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs. He tied for 12th and finished 71st in points, missing out on the playoff series by one shot.

"I had just fully accepted that whatever was going to happen was going to happen," he said.

Justin Thomas played nine holes on Tuesday at Marco Simone :: Alessandra Tarantino/AP

Three weeks later, Thomas was named to the U.S. Ryder Cup team, a controversial pick by Zach Johnson based on a lackluster year that saw him miss the cut in three major championships.

Thomas arrived in Rome on Monday with the rest of his U.S. teammates, knowing there is a bit of a focus on him this week even though he’s just one player out of 12 and can—at most—affect just five of the 28 points that are at stake beginning Friday.

On Monday afternoon, Thomas and Jordan Spieth toured the front nine of Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in a golf cart. On Tuesday, they played a nine-hole practice round with Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay.

Thomas, a two-time major winner with 17 PGA Tour victories, is well aware of the chatter.

"After I was picked, doesn’t matter what it is, especially when it comes to people and stuff online, everybody’s got an opinion and theirs is right and everybody else's is wrong, at least that's what generally seems to be," Thomas said. “So for that exact reason, I stayed away from social media and stayed away from stuff online because I knew nothing good was going to come from it.

"The only thing that mattered to me was that Zach and the vice captains and the other six guys on the team wanted me on the team. Zach and I had had discussions whenever it was before the picks ... what I told him is, obviously, of course, I want to be on the team. I think that I can compete and that I can go out there and I can do great for the team.

"But at the end of the day, if the six guys in that room don't think that I'm what's best for the team, then I don't deserve to go. That's been my thought the whole time, and I'm very glad that they did and do have faith in me. And now that I'm here, all of us hold the same weight as the other one. We are all one, and it's just our job to go out there and try to win points."

Johnson has noted several times that he relied heavily on the six players who made the U.S. team in points—Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, Brian Harman, Max Homa, Schauffele and Cantlay.

"There's a lot of, I'd say, invaluable elements when it comes to JT and this event, and I can say this in full confidence with our six guys that made this team: Those guys were adamant they wanted those six other guys to help complete their team, and J.T. was one of them," Johnson said.

He also knew that Thomas has had a strong partnership in team competition with Spieth. They won all four of their matches together last year at the Presidents Cup, where Thomas went 4-1 and Spieth 5-0.

At the 2021 Ryder Cup, they were paired together twice and went 1-1. At the 2018 Ryder Cup in France, they again played all four matches together and went 3-1 in a 17 ½ to 10 ½ U.S. defeat. Thomas is 6-2-1 overall in two Ryder Cup appearances.

"He plays really good golf, and I think he will this week," Spieth said of Thomas. “I think he's kind of turned into a backbone for the USA Ryder Cup team, and that doesn't mean he's on every one. I'm sure if you asked him, he said he didn't think he was going to be on, and I think would he have and maybe even already accepted that to a degree.

"So I think he's going to embrace the opportunity. He worked really hard on a lot of things. I think he was able to try that out and had success with it a couple weeks ago. But why he’s successful ... he just gets the ball in the hole faster than other guys do, and that's how you win matches here and that's how you play good golf.

"The elevated pressure and honestly the away games and kind of the opportunity to go like that, like he does, and to raise the crowd up, the home crowd, but also to quiet one and upset them here, he loves doing that, and it creates maybe just a little extra level of focus for him. I've been beside him for these Ryder Cups, and he quite simply plays better golf than the guys across from him."

Thomas, of course, wasn’t doing that enough this year. He hasn’t won since his 2022 PGA Championship victory and his fifth-place finish at the Fortinet Championship two weeks ago was his first top five since the WM Phoenix Open.

And Thomas is still a work in progress. All of his issues are not solved. He saw progress at the Napa, Calif., event but it is unlikely he is at the level he expects.

"I clearly am in a lot better place than I was in certain times in the summer. But I mean, it's golf," he said. "You just never know. I had plenty of signs of great golf this summer as well. It was just I had quite a few less of them and I had more signs of the other.

"But more than anything, I'm just in a good head space, and that's—for me, that's what's most important."