PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — It doesn’t matter how old you are, when you’re a golfer in the prime of your career, are in good form and you’re forced to take time off to rest a nagging injury, one week feels like a month and a month feels like a year.
Justin Thomas, 26 and with the world ahead of him, was out of action with a wrist injury for nearly two months, forced to withdraw from the PGA Championship last month at Bethpage, Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow, where he won his only career major championship with the PGA Championship in 2017, and Colonial. And it was driving him crazy.
Now he’s back this week, for the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, in pursuit of the magic he produced at Quail Hollow two summers ago.
“I watched all the PGA,’’ Thomas said Monday. “I was more upset because I really like Bethpage and I feel like it’s a really, really good golf course for me. I mean, same way I feel about Quail Hollow and the same thing about Colonial, [the] three tournaments [I missed].
“Those are courses that I feel like favor good ball-strikers. And you obviously never want to miss a major, but especially at 26 years old. But everything happens for a reason. I could go have a great rest of the year, win a major or two, and no one will remember that I had to skip the PGA.
“The main goal was to make sure I took those weeks off so the injury went away, and it did. Just taking [that] rest is the reason why I’m able to play right now. And last week and the week before there was no pain at all. It was just a bummer to watch on TV. I was very, very bored.’’
Rickie Fowler, one of Thomas’ close friends, recalled relaying to Thomas some advice he’d gotten from a veteran player when he was battling an injury that had sidelined him.
“When I had [an] injury last year and had to skip a couple of events, leading up to the Ryder Cup, [U.S. captain Jim] Furyk texted me and said he heard something from Davis Love years back: He said, ‘No one’s ever said they came back from injury too late,’ ’’ Fowler said. “That was something that I just kind of stressed on JT: ‘Just take your time, make sure you’re good to go. You don’t want to come back early and then have lingering pain or it turn into something more or something that became more long-term.’
“I think he went about it great. I know he was bored out of his mind. It’s not fun sitting at home and seeing your buddies playing events, obviously a major in there, and knowing that you should be out there and want to be out there. But I think he’s done a good job with it coming back. I think the timing of it worked out well for JT being able to play the last two weeks into here. I’m just glad he’s back swinging.’’
Thomas, who stopped playing after his tie for 12th at the Masters, returned from the injury at the Memorial two weeks, shot 71-80 and missed the cut. Needing more reps, he decided to play the RBC Canadian Open last week and finished tied for 20th.
“The wrist is a non-issue,’’ Thomas said. “That’s why I took as long as I did.’’
Thomas described the state of his game entering this week as “pretty good,’’ adding, “It’s obviously not exactly where I’d like it to be. I thought I showed a lot of good signs at Memorial.’’
He called his year to date “weird, because I got off to a great start, consistency-wise. I had a couple of great chances to win. I felt like I really should have won LA. I felt like I had a great chance to win Phoenix.’’
But Thomas, who won five tournaments in 2017 (including the PGA), hasn’t won since August.
“I was wondering when that was going to come up,’’ Thomas said of his mini-drought. “Trust me, I think about it all the time. I know what I’m capable of. I know that I can get hot. I can kind of get on a little bit of a run sometimes. I’m just trying to stay as patient as I can, because I don’t know if it will be this week, if it will be in August, if it will not be until next year, I don’t know when it’s going to be that I’ll win again.
“But I know that I miss it and it feels like it’s been a while and I’m ready to start doing it again. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen when it’s supposed to.’’
