Frustrated By Title Drought, Justin Thomas is Angry and Motivated at Valspar Championship

Thomas shot back-to-back rounds of 66 to get in contention at this week's PGA Tour stop at Copperhead.

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – If in need of motivation, Justin Thomas does not have to venture far to find it. He simply calls up the Official World Golf Ranking and scrolls down the list of names that appear above his own.

“To be perfectly honest, it pisses me off,’’ Thomas said.

Being the eighth-best in the world at anything would generally be satisfying to just about anyone. But not Thomas, who’s had a brief tenure at No. 1 in the world and as late as the U.S. Open last summer was ranked second.

But he’s steadily slipped to the position he finds himself in now, and while that certainly does not suggest he’s played poorly, it bothers him nonetheless. Has has not won events at the rate he expects.

“It just goes to show the level of golf that’s being played,’’ said Thomas, 28, who shot consecutive rounds of 5-under-par 66 at Innsbrook’s Copperhead course and is in contention at this weekend's Valspar Championship. “I clearly have not won very many golf tournaments in the last two years, year-and-a-half at least. But I’ve played some pretty damn good golf and if you’re not winning tournaments, you’re getting lapped right now and that’s just the way it is.

“And that’s a good thing for the game of golf. Having Patrick Cantlay do what he did last year pushes me to become better, and having Collin Morikawa and Jon Rahm and Viktor Hovland play as good as they are and be in contention in all the majors and win the biggest golf tournaments, yeah, selfishly and the jealous side of me wants that to be me.

“So it gets me working harder because your main goal is to have no names above you in the World Ranking and I definitely have more ahead of me than I would like.’’

Thomas won his 14th PGA Tour title 53 weeks ago when he captured the Players Championship by shooting a final-round 64 at TPC Sawgrass.

No victories have followed.

The win moved him to second in the world, but he then had a stretch of 12 consecutive tournaments where he posted just one top-10 finish.

He also did not contend in any of the major championships, his best finish a tie for 19th at the U.S. Open. By the end of 2021, Thomas had dropped to seventh in the world, and despite three top-fives in 2022, he is now eighth.

Rahm is No. 1, followed by Morikawa, Hovland, Cantlay, Scottie Scheffler, Cameron Smith and Rory McIlroy.

Thomas finds himself both frustrated at not winning and yet trying to remain patient.

“When you use both of those (words) in the same sentence they just don’t make sense,’’ Thomas said. “It’s easy to be frustrated with it, but usually when you’re frustrated , you force things or want things to start happening.

“I haven’t been out here a crazy long time, but I’ve been out here long enough to know that stuff like this happens, and you’re going to go on times where things aren’t going as well or some of the difference of those putts going in don’t go in and some balls that bounce in the fairway bounce in the bunker.

“And then you get on one of those hot streaks like I was on in 2017 and 2018 or like Rahm’s been on or Collin and it happens. But you just have to be in the right frame of mind for it to happen. I can’t be moping around the golf course and somehow expect things to start going my way. I have to stay in that positive frame of mind so when it does happen I’m expecting it.’’

Through 36 holes, Thomas has just two scores over par, a double-bogey 6 on the 7th hole (his 16tH) Friday halted what looked to be an exceptional round.

Starting on Copperhead’s back nine, Thomas played it in 30 strokes, with birdies all three par 3s and both par 5s. He then added birdies at the 1st and 5th holes before getting greedy while trying to hit around a tree and running into trouble, leading to his only miscue of the day.

He still managed to get home in 5 under again, and finds himself trailing leader Adam Hadwin – the 2017 Valspar winner – by two strokes.

“I feel like I've been trending the right direction,’’ Thomas said. “I said it, I've been saying it. I feel like I'm really close to playing some good golf and getting on a run and winning some tournaments.

“But that being said, it doesn't mean that it's going to happen. I'm not owed anything. I just have to go out and get it and execute, and I feel like the areas that I needed to improve are starting to improve, and I feel like the areas that were pretty good are maintaining that or even getting a little bit better. So at this point, it's just about kind of staying in that focus and really just trying to execute each shot.’’