HAWAII – Even though he is two and a half years removed from his last PGA Tour victory, Justin Thomas remains a confident player.
The 31-year-old enters this week’s season-opening event, The Sentry, in Kapalua, Hawaii, looking to have a career-best year.
“I still fully believe that I can have a year like Scottie (Scheffler) just had,” Thomas said on January 1, referring to the No. 1 player in the world who won seven times in 2024, including the Masters and the Tour Championship.
“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 confidence and ability in my game, and I feel like I’m working on the right things.”
Thomas’ most recent win was the second major victory of his career, at the 2022 PGA Championship. His best year in terms of wins was 2017, when he captured five events, including the PGA Championship.
He added: “I definitely undervalued (winning) at the time. I really felt like I was going to win multiple times every season until I kind of lost it. It’s just so hard to win here… Of course, the better you are, you can get away with more mistakes, but at the end of the week on Sunday you have to win the golf tournament.”
In the 2024 season, Thomas competed in 20 events and achieved his best results at the beginning and end of the year. He started with a tie for third at The American Express and a tie for sixth at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and he ended the campaign with a tie for second at the Zozo Championship.
Thomas missed out on selection for the U.S. team that competed in the Presidents Cup, which he believes is motivation to make the Ryder Cup team in 2025.
For others, like Chris Kirk, the focus this week is on retaining his title at The Sentry as the 39-year-old tries to fend off challenges from experienced players and a crop of emerging young talent.
“It’s different in so many ways that it’s hard to really sum it up,” Kirk said of the differences in the Tour since breaking in.
“The level of play and consistency of the players is very high. I feel so lucky that I’ve been able to keep up and progress…I feel like I’m a much better player now than I was then, but so is everyone else.”
He praised the improvements in the golf course’s agronomy before adding: ‘Obviously we’re playing for a lot more money, and I’m amazed. I think a lot of us were worried about what the Tour would look like. when Tiger wasn’t here every week.
“I’m really pleasantly surprised that the Tour is flourishing, and we have a lot of great young stars, and there are great stories every week. I know there are a lot of things people would like to see changed and things that could be better, but professional golf is in such a great place.”
Kirk is also in a good place. He ended a victory drought of more than seven years when he won the Honda Classic in February 2023, and then opened the 2024 season with his win at The Sentry.
He finished in the top 35 in three of the four majors in 2024 before finishing 27th in the Tour Championship.
Looking ahead to 2025, he said: “My goals are to really just stick to my routines of what I like to do to prepare each week. My time at home consists of working more on my physical fitness and strength and stuff in the gym, and then throwing in the golf stuff when I feel like I need it.
Sixty players will tee off at The Sentry’s season opener on Thursday, with the field reserved for the top 50 players from the 2024 FedEx Cup race plus anyone who has won a tournament throughout the year.
But world number one Scottie Scheffler will not perform after suffering a stab wound from a broken glass while cooking on Christmas Day. He required surgery to remove fragments of glass from the palm of his right hand.
World No. 2 Xander Schauffele will be the main attraction in Hawaii, with Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy also opting to skip the event.
Schauffele is coming off a breakout season in which he won his first two majors, the PGA Championship and the Open Championship.
He will play the first two rounds with Wyndham Clark and the Swede Ludvig Aberg. Other notable players in the field include Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Will Zalatoris, Tony Finau, Max Homa and Justin Thomas. REUTERS
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