"Frustrating, bad, confusing" - Justin Thomas rates the 2023 PGA Tour season, says he is 'learning' from it
Justin Thomas' struggles in 2023 were well documented. The 2022 PGA Championship winner came into that calendar year off a pretty good one, but things really fell apart. He failed to make the playoffs and just generally did not have very many good performances. He knows it wasn't a good year, especially by his standards.
In PGA Tour's second installment of 'Swing by with Jason Kennedy', Thomas was asked to just give a few words of description of his 2023 season (12:43-12:56), to which he listed the words, "Comfortable, frustrating, bad, confusing, learning."
The golfer was also asked if he believes 2023 to be his least successful season yet (13:06-13:31), and he was blunt:
"I felt like it was as an amazing opportunity for me to grow and learn a lot. And I think that I'm very lucky to have a great support system around me and a great team that just constantly reminded me to keep my head up and keep pushing and looking forward not backward. And understanding it's always dark as before dawn. And it just I don't know, I felt like I was very lucky for that."
Thomas did not record a single PGA Tour victory in 2023. He did finish in the top five a few times, including his best placement being a solo third place at the Hero World Challenge in 2023.
He missed the cut six times that year and finished 60th or worse three times. Without any wins to counteract those poor finishes, it's easy to see why it was such a frustrating year.
To make matters worse, Thomas was selected for the Ryder Cup, where it was expected that he might redeem himself. However, that didn't happen. Thomas did perform pretty well, but the Americans were soundly defeated by the Europeans at Marco Simone.
Based on the above interview, it seems that Thomas is at least adopting a positive attitude about it. It was his worst professional golf year, but the man called "JT" is taking it as a learning opportunity to try and be better in the future.
How is Justin Thomas doing in 2024?
To say that Justin Thomas is off to a better start in 2024 might not be totally accurate. He does have two top-10 finishes, which is already half of what he had last year. But he also has three missed cuts, half of last year's total.
So far, it's been a very up and down season for the golfer. He started out strong, finishing T3 at the American Express after shooting an astonishing 27 under par. He followed that up by placing T6 at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
A decent T12 at the WM Phoenix Open seemed to indicate that he'd turned things around, but then he missed the cut at the Genesis Invitational and would go on to miss the cut in two of the next four events, with one of his cuts made ending up as a T64 finish.
He also just missed the cut at the Masters after shooting seven over par in two rounds, so he's not in great form at the moment.