Softspoken Davis Thompson easily falls into the category of “mature amateur.” But two months after his first U.S. Open start, there’s another phrase in his vocabulary.
Mature pro.
Major championships are full of gold nuggets for players like Thompson, a senior at the University of Georgia who expects to turn professional mid-summer and chase a PGA Tour career. This was one of them.
“Just try not to let anything bother me,” Thompson said in trying to define the difference between those two things. “Playing with Brendon Todd, Harris English the first couple rounds. They kind of showed their emotions a little bit, but once that shot was over, they were on to the next one.
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“I think I hit a lot of really good golf shots that second round at the U.S. Open, but the margin for error’s just so little out there. So I kind of let that get the best of me and that kind of led to some more bogeys. It was a great experience for me to learn how to deal with those mistakes and how to deal with just moving on and not really thinking about the previous shot.”
English is perhaps the Georgia alum with whom Thompson identifies the most. He says their personalities are similar, and that English understands the way Thompson thinks.
“He’s a guy that I played with him in the U.S. Open, I played a couple practice rounds with him as well and he was just really encouraging to me throughout the entire week, which really meant a lot,” Thompson said.
Thompson had rounds of 69-78 at Winged Foot to miss the cut. He made two starts in SEC-only events with his Georgia team over the next six weeks, finishing fourth at the Blessings Intercollegiate and fifth at the Vanderbilt Legends Collegiate.
Now he’s sitting at No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, a position that, if he can maintain it, can bring a lot of perks – namely, a spot on the U.S. Walker Cup team in May. Reaching that spot became a goal over the summer after Thompson found himself in the top 10 in the WAGR.
“I just kind of told myself let’s try to get to No. 1,” he said.
Thompson played the RSM Classic, the Tour stop at Sea Island Resort near his home in St. Simons Island, Georgia, in 2019. He finished 23rd that week. Traditionally, the winner of the prestigious Jones Cup gets the nod this week, but Thompson played the 2019 RSM despite finishing runner-up to Akshay Bhatia in a weather-shortened event that ended in a playoff. Since Bhatia had turned professional by the time the opportunity rolled around, the tournament committee reached out to Thompson, offering him an opportunity to play in the event as an amateur.
This year’s exemption came off a runaway, nine-shot victory at the 2020 Jones Cup. Things could not feel more familiar around this place, which Thompson said he has played 50 to 100 times.
“That number really increased during quarantine, just coming out here and playing pretty much every day and just practicing while I wasn’t able to go back to Athens,” he said.
Longtime friend Reynolds Carl, who caddied for him at the 2019 RSM, returns to the bag, and should the wind kick up, things shift even further in Thompson’s favor.
“Playing out here you just kind of become familiar with the greens and the speeds and how the grain affects it,” he said. “You know, also I’m able to flight the ball really well if it gets windy.
Maturity and familiarity will go hand-in-hand this week.
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