Justin Thomas has vowed that he could match the heroics of Scottie Scheffler over the last 12 months as he backed himself to embark on a successful year.
The former world No. 1 last won a major championship in 2022, when he earned his second PGA Championship victory after beating Will Zalatoris via a playoff. Previous to this, the star from Kentucky had won the 2017 edition of the tournament, with this representing his first career major title.
After bursting onto the scen earlier in his career, the 31-year-old has experienced mixed fortunes in recent times and is without a victory on the PGA Tour in over two years. However, the current world No. 19 is determined to finally end his wait for another victory on the American circuit.
Having taken part in 20 events across 2024, his best showings came as he placed third at The American Express, while also finishing as the runner-up at the Zozo Championship. Meanwhile, aforementioned rival Scheffler experienced a bumper year as he won seven events including the Players Championship, alongside victories at the Masters and the Olympic Games.
After the 2025 season got underway at The Sentry, Thomas spoke positively as he looks forward to the year ahead. He said: “I still fully believe that I can have a year like Scottie (Scheffler) just had. I think I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t think I could at least do that. I have a lot of faith and capability in my game, and I feel like I’m working on the right things.”
As for his own drought in terms of tournament wins, the American admitted that breaking his hoodoo would provide him with a great deal of satisfaction. Looking back at his successes earlier in his career, he confessed: “I underappreciated (winning) then, for sure.
“I truly felt like I was going to win multiple times every season pretty much, until I lost it a little bit. It is, it’s just so hard to win out here. … Naturally, the better player that you are, you can get away with more mistakes, but come the end of the week on Sunday, you have to win the golf tournament.
“Winning it in different places can happen differently. You can maybe get it given to you a little bit more than other times,” he continued, as he provided insight into life as an elite-level golfer. “But you still have to do a lot of things correctly and hit the shots and make putts when you need to win.
“And, yeah, I was fortunate where I was doing it quite often and, I mean, I still feel like I’m fully capable and expect to do that more, but I definitely felt like it was, it should have happened regularly kind of thing.”
Meanwhile, Thomas acknowledged that he has one eye on putting himself in contention for selection for the Ryder Cup later in the year. He added: “I haven’t had the opportunity to play p—– off for a while, so I’m pretty excited to play a little p—– off this year.”
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