DUBLIN, Ohio – During his tour around the back nine to begin his first round Thursday in the Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village Golf Club, Justin Thomas was dealing with an internal struggle.
The world No. 5 wasn’t suffering with any illness but instead was grappling with what was going on inside the six inches between his ears. Try as he might, he just couldn’t get used to how silent the COVID-induced, spectator-less grounds were.
“It was so quiet you could almost kind of hear yourself think, and I’m over a shot and it’s just you’d hear nothing but almost like white noise,” Thomas said. “Usually you kind of have that buzz and you kind of focus in on trying to hit your number, and I just had a hard time with that at the start.”
Tee times, TV info | Field by the rankings | Photos | Leaderboard
It took Thomas eight holes to adjust. While he did birdie the 11th – his second hole of the day – he scrambled to stay in red figures and finally hit his first fairway in regulation on the 17th. From there, the white noise didn’t have a chance.
Once he got comfortable in the tranquil setting, Thomas closed with three birdies in his final eight holes and signed for a 4-under-par 68 to get on the first page of the leaderboard. On the hot, steamy day, he stood two shots out of the lead set by Adam Hadwin. Three players – Nick Taylor, Hideki Matsuyama and Zach Johnson – shot 67. Thomas was joined at 68 by Pat Perez and Louis Oosthuizen.
“It was a good score for how I feel like I played,” Thomas said. “I didn’t play bad, but I definitely didn’t play great by any means. Didn’t drive it very well on the front nine, and 18 was kind of the first of a few holes, or at least a stretch of holes, where I really hit it well off the tee, hit a good iron into the green, hit a couple good putts. I just was playing more solidly and giving myself a chance on every hole, and that’s something you can do out here.
[vertical-gallery id=778053504]
“If you get it in the fairway, you have a lot – at least I have a lot of 7-, 8-, 9-(irons), wedges into greens – and those are clubs I can score with.”
The 68 seemed to indicate that Thomas, at least on this day, was Dr. Jekyll instead of Mr. Hyde at Muirfield Village. On the revered layout built by Jack Nicklaus, Thomas has been either good or bad. In six starts at the Memorial, he’s missed the cut in 2015, 2016 and in his most recent start in 2019, and when he’s made it to the weekend, he’s finished in ties for fourth, eighth and 37th.
Prior to the start of the Workday, Thomas said he was working on trying to get a handle on this place. But he wasted little time, saying he hasn’t completely solved Nicklaus’s daunting puzzle but he’s getting there.
“It’s not like we figured it out this week,” Thomas said. “I was hitting it all over the planet the year that I missed the cuts here, and that’s what this place is about. If you hit it well, you’re going to have some low rounds each day, but you can make just as many bogeys as you can birdies. But the holes that I did get out of play or hit it in the rough, I just understand you have to take the hole for what it is at that point. You have to try to make par.
“As soon as you start trying to make birdies on some of these holes from the rough, you’re going to make bogeys and doubles, and keep making those they pile up pretty quickly.”
[jwplayer Ed28Mjar-9JtFt04J]
[lawrence-related id=778053434,778053409,778053040]