Taking Stock of Justin Thomas’s Career and Future

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball.

00:00:06
Speaker 2: In a fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Frida egg Friday Frida Egg Egg, Frida Egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the.

00:00:37
Speaker 3: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today I'm joined by Joseph Lamania. Joseph, what are you in on?

00:00:49
Speaker 2: Andy? I'm We've talked about this a little bit already. I'm in on the idea of a cutthroat competitive fall. I don't know how you feel. I've been enjoying the fall. A lot of these tournaments about as much as signature events. Are more than signature events this year, and I think the opportunity to get some of these KFT guys in, as you and I have talked about maybe even creating a path for live golfers if they wanted to participate, you end up with this hodgepodge of golfers playing with a lot on the line. Like JT. Postin is in the lead right now as we record, means something different to him than Michael Kim who's trying to retain his status and get like Daniel Berger and Gary Woodland coming back from injuries, proven talents on the PGA Tour, trying to regain their status. There's a real opportunity here for this to be a compelling product.

00:01:38
Speaker 3: I've been enjoying it, Yeah, I would echo that, I've really enjoyed the Fall. I enjoyed, really enjoyed last week with Matt McCarty winning, and it made me. You know, the one of the big tweaks I would want to see is I'd want to see all the corn Faery Tour players in it. And obviously they had they come in to the tour with priority rankings from the tour before, but it would be neat to see them kind of slot into the like have appropriate places that they slot into the Fall, and then kind of move up and down from there. It just it would give them, and you would give the tour an opportunity to kind of introduce the new players into the tour. It would give some players a little bit more of a runway to become household names on the PGA Tour. I think you saw last year. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me. But the PGA Tour corn the corn Fairy Tour graduates were way less successful than the European Tour graduates, and I think part of that is that they get a really tough welcome to the PGA Tour. They finished their season in September, and then they don't play competitive golf off again until like February, late late January. They're getting into the AMX as their first event. Meanwhile, like you flip that, the top players from the from the European Tour are playing into into mid November in Dubai high level golf, their version of their playoffs, and then they're coming over. Of course, they're hitting the ground running better, they're they're just sharper, and I think this would be a way to kind of bridge that gap and and really I.

00:03:29
Speaker 1: Add to the level of play in the fall. Just in general.

00:03:33
Speaker 2: I'm with you, and I think part of what you're hitting on with some of the lack of success from Cornberry Tour guys in this season who were the graduates from the previous year. We hear all the time in golf that the margins are thin. They're really not that thin. Generally when a golfer deserves to move up, they move up, right. That's something we've talked about on this pod. A lot of the golfers who are filling out the bottom of this field at the Shriners Fing example, we kind of know that they're not signature event caliber players. There's enough of a sample size there that they probably are. Not. Some of these new corn Ferry Tour the thirty that come in like McCarty and then you know twenty nine others, some of them might be. And if they could pick off a win or something like McCarty did, they could get into the Masters, they could get into Pebble Beach, Riviera. You got to give these guys a chance. So I'm with you on that one, Andy, What are you in on?

00:04:27
Speaker 3: I am in on. I gotta say, NBC guess a lot of grief. They've been slashing a lot of stuff. They've been cutting back from the production. You know, they you know, the production necessarily hasn't been the greatest over the last few years. I gotta give them a little credit. I've been in on the added rise of televised college golf this fall, like there have been noticeably more tournaments on television which I've really enjoyed just in general, speaking holistically about the top level of college golf, they play better courses than the professionals, and there are a lot more unique events. I think there's like they're a little bit more fun. There's some dynamics to watch. You have the team Championship, you have individuals. Is the broadcast level as good does? They have so many bells and whistles? Know, but it's nice televised golf usually during part of the week when there was when there isn't a regular golf being played. You know, a lot of these run on Monday through Wednesday or different things. But it's nice to see, just in general, NBC expanding on what they have. I mean, they got the rights to the NCAA Championships, they should want to expand their college golf coverage because that's going to make the there there be more interest in the NCAAs when it comes around in the spring. So I've really been into that, into the expanded college golf coverage.

00:05:58
Speaker 2: With the off site the National Championship moving to California, I mean, that's another opportunity for it to be on primetime, right, Are you pretty bullish on the future of televised collegiate golf feels like a huge opportunity, you know.

00:06:13
Speaker 1: I just I think there's so much like.

00:06:16
Speaker 3: I'll just do this as what I'm out on is like I'm out on on. I guess I'm out on the What I don't like is the murky future of tele televised golf. I think we're at a point right now where it's it's really hard to understand where where it's going to be in like three or four years or five years. What what's going on now with with commercial load these in all the streaming channels, whether it's you know, Peacock, you know there's Amazon, all all these giants, Apple, Netflix, and then with the downturn and cable subscribers. I'm just really I think we're we're at a place where the televised golf situation is gonna be drastically different that I think we're going to be probably looking you know, Golf Channel. I don't know how long that's going to be around, right, It's just an interesting moment for televised golf. I think like the way it's working now is not sustainable. So I guess that's also what I'm out on but like I'm very in on like the you know, like I think college golf could be streamed.

00:07:40
Speaker 1: I you know, there was a there was an outfit that.

00:07:42
Speaker 3: Was doing the streaming coverage before COVID, and I think COVID kind of kind of ran it down, but you know there there could be more golf in a lower production version, if that makes sense.

00:07:56
Speaker 2: Well, I think PGA Tour Live is some of the best golf coverage that we get, Like, it's one of my favorite products in golf, and that doesn't require a million bells and whistles. So if things look a little bit more like that, I don't think that's a reason to be pessimistic.

00:08:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just curious, like where is where is? Where is pro.

00:08:15
Speaker 3: Golf going to be televised in four years? To clarify like kind of where I started. I had something else that I was out on, but your answer has moved me over there is Like what does that look like? Is it still network TV in six or seven years or four to six years or does it go exclusively to an app?

00:08:38
Speaker 2: Seems like if it's anything like any other sports, it seems like it can only move in that direction. This is probably a bigger question Andy, But with the TV deal that the PGA Tour has and knowing that as part of those contracts their strength of field stipulations, and there's kind of that death spiral outcome that I don't know the details of how close we are that has that been ringing around in your head like wow, this some of this stuff could get triggered and a lot of these deals could become moot.

00:09:10
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I well, I think like something that to just monitor is is Live with all this, Like Live's got looking for a TV deal. I've heard that they're asking for a big dollar amount. But like with Live, what if they what if they continue to invest and take more talent away and that strength of field thing becomes something that NBC or CBS can't ignore where they they say you are not delivering, Like, you know, it's funny.

00:09:49
Speaker 1: I was I was watching golf.

00:09:51
Speaker 3: As I flew today and it was great that I was watching golf all I flew, but Sans was talking about how none of the pro sports teams were in town. You know, the Raiders weren't in town this week, so come watch the world's best at the Shriners. And in my head, I was like, well, like, these aren't the world's best at the Shriners, And what if more PGA tour events like I think like they sell a lot of regular PGA like the Fall. I don't think they sell that as the best, but they sell the John Deere in Detroit and Minneapolis, and yeah, they sell that as the best even though there might be one of the top twenty players there. What if a lot of events eventually get to zero the top twenty players, That's where I think they run into a really big problem.

00:10:47
Speaker 2: All right, I'm with you. That's something that's been ringing around in my head too, and that only feeds some of those theories about the officialbo Golf rankings, right, and some of the coordination between the governing body. So I mean, that's that's hitting on that, all right. I'll get to what I'm out on. As somebody who's pro rollback, Andy, I've got to put my foot down somewhere. I'm out on these screenshots of four hundred yard drives that players are hitting in the desert at either Black Desert or at Shriners, and people tweeting it's time to roll the ball back, that the anti rollback crowd is often disingenuous with how they use data. The pro rollback crowd cannot follow suit and also be disingenuous with data. When it's downwind, super firm conditions, a four hundred yard drive, I could hit one three point fifty and that's that's nothing to do with how far I hit the golf ball.

00:11:42
Speaker 1: We got to stop doing that.

00:11:43
Speaker 2: You can't take a jade on blaze Jaydon hit one three thirty last week that there are plenty of instances to screenshot and say that things are out of control firm, desert conditions, downwind. We can't be doing that.

00:11:59
Speaker 1: All right, I can, I can buy that.

00:12:01
Speaker 3: I think it's like you need to more focus on the carry and what they're what they're doing to make like what used to be challenging carries just completely elementary.

00:12:14
Speaker 2: For sure, And like eighteen at Riviera is a good example where that's been completely decimated by technology, and those conditions usually don't change a ton year over year, Like look at how the driving distance on that hole has changed, not maybe forty mile hour winds down down wind like we got at Shriners on the basically on this Friday afternoon, this past Friday afternoon.

00:12:35
Speaker 3: You could have you could have added something I'm out on as Riviera adding the back to eighty t on four, which is just what you thought about. It just just going to exacerbate the uh, the cakuya front issue they have. They're just going to make it harder to hit the green.

00:12:54
Speaker 1: The hardest screen to hit in professional golf, the fourth at Riviera.

00:12:58
Speaker 3: It's not because of the golf architecture, it's because of the the cocuia surround.

00:13:06
Speaker 2: I'm so out on that. Maybe we can save that for Riviera a week and get back into it, but that is they've really botched that whole.

00:13:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, today, I'm excited about our pod today. This is we're going to talk about Justin Thomas, just the state of Justin Thomas, where he's at, what he's done, which I think like he's a Hall of Fame lock at this point. He is a I think you probably could put him in the generational talent space.

00:13:39
Speaker 1: But we're going to kind of dive in.

00:13:41
Speaker 3: Obviously, he's he's hit a patch in his career where it hasn't been great, the level of great.

00:13:49
Speaker 1: That we've become accustomed to. He's thirty one years old.

00:13:53
Speaker 3: So I thought it was a good time to just have a kind of a frank discussion about Justin Thomas's career highlights and kind of where he's at now and where we might think he's going to go. But first, let's talk about our partner, Stripe. We are extremely excited to partner with Stripe on this podcast, and one of the reasons that I'm so excited is that I have been a Stripe customer for years. So it's always nice when like a big company that you partner with reaches out, because it's like, oh, I love you. You know, we have a lot, I have a lot of service providers that I might not have that general reaction to, but Stripe handles our money the most maybe the most important aspect of running a business they handle and I've never once had a single issue with Stripe in the eight years.

00:14:49
Speaker 1: That we've worked together.

00:14:50
Speaker 3: So for us, they do a lot of payment processing, but they do a lot more than that. They you know, in terms of payments they process, they power one percent of.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: The total global GDP.

00:15:06
Speaker 3: So they work with businesses, decide a small businesses like ourselves, but then they also work with giants like hurts Lift Salesforce, Square, Space, WordPress, Zoom, Toyota, giant companies. So the neat thing about Stripe is that it is not like a specialized product, you know that's only for enterprise companies. It Stripe can help just about any business. So there are a couple other products that they have. They have optimized checkout Suite basically helps people not abandon their cart by providing a really wide range of payment options. They also have a billing product where they work with three hundred thousand businesses that's more than anybody else and create, you know, building software that allows from monthly subscriptions, usage based billing, and voicing anything that you need from a billing standpoint. So if you are interested in getting striped to work with your business, as they've worked so well with ours, you can learn more about them and what they do at stripe dot com. All right, Justin Thomas, let's talk about Justin Thomas. Let's just dive. I'm going to rattle off some basics about him and then we can kind of jump off from there. So everybody's kind of situated. Justin Thomas one of the best active players in the world from a resume standpoint. Fifteen wins on the PGA Tour, two major championships, one Players Championship.

00:16:47
Speaker 1: In there he reached.

00:16:49
Speaker 3: Number one in the world rankings. He has three Ryder Cup appearances, three Presidents Cup showings. He was the Player of the Year in twenty sixteen. Twenty seventeen on the PGA Tour, he had five wins, his first major and he was the FedEx Cup champion that year. Justin Thomas was kind of I can't miss. He turned pro after just two years at Alabama. He won the Haskins Award as a freshman there. People knew about him long before his college days. He made the cut at the Windham as a sixteen year old. He was the third youngest to make a PGA Tour cut. He got to the tour very quickly after turning pro. He played on the court on the web dot Com Tour. Then in twenty fourteen, he won his first event as a pro, finished fifth on the money list and third after the finals. So he basically has just just breezed up to the tour and then as a rookie was very good. He finished thirty second in the FedEx Cup as a rookie. Do you know who he finished runner up to in the Rookie of the Year voting No Daniel Berger. Okay, interesting, Yeah, so Daniel Berger, I think you know pretty much if one player makes it to Atlanta, that are going to be the Rookie of the year. So Daniel Berger wins the Rookie of the Year that year. His first win came shortly after that rookie year. He won in November in Malaysia. Event he won twice this the late great unfortunately shuddered cimb I always loved the odd hours, the cimb hot, muggy, rainy conditions that are presented. Just for context here, his last win was the twenty twenty two PGA Championship those two and a half years ago, and then he was the last man to qualify. Who's thirtieth coming into Eastlake this year, and he missed the top seventy last year. So that's kind of the reason for this talk. If everything was hunky dory and justin Thomas Land, I don't think we'd be having this discussion. When I say, and Thomas like, what's generally the first thing that you think of.

00:19:06
Speaker 2: Big question? I think of elite wedge play, Like if I needed somebody to hit one hundred and five yard shot to four feet. Who do I want hitting that shot? And Justin Thomas is among the first names that comes to mind. I don't know if this is cheating on the question a little bit, but in doing the research, one thing that I gained an appreciation for was how strong the beginning of his career was, and overall, as you zoom out, how weak his major championship resume is. Outside of the two wins. Not to discount the two wins obviously, that's those are not many guys get to two wins, but he doesn't have a great Major championship track record, and so some of the I think we'll probably get into this a little bit, but some of the what kind of courses does he succeed on versus what have the last couple of years looked like in majors? I think there are some questions.

00:20:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, I you know, if I was going to answer that question, I would say that he is just one of the most fun golfers to watch. From a there is a there's kind of like a ability to just really pour it on with Justin Thomas. There's a there's a shot making an element to his game. His short game has is just out of this world. Like I think he'd be among my three or four favorite people to watch hit chip shots, you know, and I think there's just a general charisma and energy about his game that makes him really like I think like one of the things that golf has struggled with in a post Tiger era is like people golfers that people are genuinely excited to watch play golf. I'm genuinely excited to watch Justin Thomas play golf in person and on television because you know you're going to see him hit shots that other players aren't gonna hit. I think like some of that excitement with j T also is his volatility. You know, you see loose shots from him, you see you see, but you also see the great shots, and there's an element of him not being kind of that boring type player. And I wonder, you know, I pulling up the major record was really interesting to look at because, as you said, it hasn't been great, and I think like some of that volatility in the game that that it's not unpredictability, but there's like almost like a little bit of a wildness in the game probably is what cuts against major Championship Golf seventy two holes on the the supreme toughest tests, which which require you to just have that that high level precision throughout a seventy two whole tournament.

00:22:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't know if we were going to get into this part of this as the conversation as quickly as maybe we are. But that's a huge note that I have with Justin Thomas that can A big part of skill and being one of the best players in the world is consistency, and I think with Justin Thomas, the inconsistency maybe sometimes gets framed as can get hot. Sometimes he's not as good, but you want somebody that can get hot because they can win majors. I think where I've more landed is the best players in the world are consistent and you can count on them to show up like Xander Schoffley, like a Scottie Scheffler, and that is keeping Justin Thomas in this tier that's well below them. I don't know what you think of this theory, Andy, but something that's been rolling around in my head a lot is that, like twenty fifteen to twenty twenty four has been a transformational era from the way that people play sports information within of course management in golf, the sport has changed a lot, and that's that pretty much overlaps with the beginning of Justin Thomas's career until now, and back in those days, people made a lot of mistakes on the golf course far more often than they do now. We're at a point where golfers are optimized, and again this is happening in other sports too, where they're going for it on fourth down more often in the NFL, like we are in an optimized era. And when you're Justin Thomas and you hit those loose shots and he tries some of these shots that are creative and artistic but maybe not the smartest shots, you can't get away with those anymore like you could have in eight nine years ago when things weren't as optimized and as tidy. What do you think of that theory.

00:23:47
Speaker 3: I think it's a theory, but I think like you're discounting the consistency that he had at one point in his career, and I think like, I think you hit on one piece of what I would suggest this is going on, is that this optimized era of golf is going to make careers shorter and it almost you have to appreciate the greatness when you have it because it's probably going to be short lived.

00:24:16
Speaker 1: You know.

00:24:16
Speaker 3: I think, like I found this, I found this old espionation article. I thought it might have been Brendan's when I clicked on it, but it was also a friend of the program Kyle Robbins after the twenty sixteen Coil Hollow Tournament. The article really was framed around how with Justin Thomas, there is a new face of American golf and it was going to be him and Jordan Speith duking it out, and they kind of like the way it worked is they they almost like missed each other and they were great. They were both great in this period of time, but they were just like they had these like bisecting streets. But he said, Thomas is a mid two thousands is mid two thousand Big twelve distilled into.

00:25:05
Speaker 1: A PGA Tour player.

00:25:06
Speaker 3: So for you, that was like when you know Texas Tech was scoring like sixty five points a game, it was when like the spread offense was Yeah, the spread offense was just revolutionizing college football.

00:25:20
Speaker 1: But it was like the start of that sure is perhaps.

00:25:23
Speaker 3: Gonna go a little wild sometimes, but as fun as hell, and there's gonna be lost of yards through the air. And I think like JT was awesome for a good chunk of years. Like I so his end of year world ranks, and this is this is I think the end of this is like a little bit more excus like a little safer. It should be higher because of the lived defections. But he went twenty fifteen thirty seventh, twenty sixteen, twenty second, twenty seventeen, end of year, third, twenty eighteen, end of year, fourth, twenty nineteen, end of year fourth, twenty twenty, end of year third, twenty twenty one end of year seventh, twenty twenty two, end of year eighth, So you get And then twenty three ended at twenty six, and right now in twenty forty's thirty third, so he's probably gonna end thirty five thirty six in the world. But you go there, you got six years of him being without a doubt a top ten player in the year in the world and five years of him being a top five player in the world. I mean, that is that's pretty rarefied error. And I just think it might have just been a short window.

00:26:40
Speaker 2: I'm with you, I don't mean to suggest that it's just the mistakes that are keeping him from it. I mean, I'm sure the one thing you wanted to get into a little bit is where has his game fallen off? But playing off of what you were just saying there, he used to be very long on the PGA Tour, and he's still not short, but his ball speed has kind of a mained. His ball speed in twenty sixteen was one seventy five and he was twenty sixth on tour that year, and in twenty twenty four it was one seventy eight. Went up three miles an hour over that time period and that's forty fifth on tour. Now, the game's been getting a lot faster and Justin Thomas has only gotten a little bit faster. His distance advantage is not like it used to be. And the other thing that he's clearly gotten worse as a putter. He's never been a great putter, but he had a couple of very strong putting years between like twenty sixteen and twenty eighteen where he was consistently positive. Andy, I maybe you realize this, but he was one of the worst putters on tour this year. He was losing a half a shot around and he was like one hundred and sixty fifth out of one hundred and seventy five golfers on the PGA Tour this year. He's gone from being an average putter or maybe as slightly below depending on the year, to being a bad putter. And when you're as strong as he is with his wedges giving himself a lot of those six ten foot looks, if you're an average putter and you're converting some of those and it flips to where you're a bad putter and those aren't going in, you're gonna see it in the scores.

00:28:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I you know, I would agree with the take on the on the uh power really the distant I think like that's like something that is it's similar. I think some similar things happened to Ricky Fowler just a couple of years earlier and later where Ricky Fowler was like kind of like that same class of driving distance when he came out like a top twenty driver, the driving distance guy like Justin Thomas, and.

00:28:42
Speaker 1: I think, like JT.

00:28:43
Speaker 3: I charted this like he's still above average, but those years that he was really great, he was you know when he came out on tour twenty fourteen. Twenty fifteen, he was fifteenth, twenty fourth, the next year eighth and eleventh, and driving distance now he's kind of more hovering around the twenties. If you averaged it out high twenties, that's a big difference.

00:29:07
Speaker 1: That's a big lot.

00:29:08
Speaker 3: That's from going from probably like what if you think about like uh a, like players in other sports, like going from like a the fourteenth best player in the player in the sport to the you know, twenty ninth, that's a big drop. And it's like it's going from elite to above average. Really that's losing. You lose guys, yeah, And that's like saying yeah, And so when you do when that happens, you need to have the the skill skills pick up in other places. And we've seen it though with his short game. I like, like one thing I had in here, he's become.

00:29:52
Speaker 1: Extraordinary around the greens.

00:29:53
Speaker 3: I didn't I'd never like done the deep dive on his on his around the green play. I mean, like he's gone from when he came out on tour he was probably about average above average to he is otherworldly around the green sow So he has improved other skills, but the putter, I mean, the putter is the big the big glaring hole is when Justin Thomas putswell, he wins a lot. And I think that's evidenced by the year that he won five times. In that year he was forty third in strokes gain putting. Now, like if you compare that in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, he had far superior uh skill set distribution with his strokes gain like they are, he was categorically better, but he was one hundred and forty fourth in putting.

00:30:48
Speaker 1: And you know how many times? How many times do you think he won?

00:30:51
Speaker 2: Which year was that was?

00:30:52
Speaker 1: Twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen once one win.

00:30:58
Speaker 2: No, twenty eighteen he won, didn't wine Honda twenty eighteen.

00:31:00
Speaker 1: So well, it was twenty eighteen, fall the fall, the nineteen.

00:31:05
Speaker 2: Okay, so fall, okay, yeah once, twenty eighteen faulted okay once?

00:31:10
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:31:10
Speaker 3: So he won once that year and he was extraordined. It was as consistent as you've ever seen him though, Like he had he had top ten and in a third of his starts and he had two thirds of his starts were top twenty five. So the ball striking was so good. But the putter, I mean, since since really the twenty eighteen he hasn't finished inside the top eighty five and putting.

00:31:37
Speaker 2: You may hate this comparison, Andy, This might be disrespectful, but I get when I'm looking at the courses that Justin Thomas has done well on in some of the lack of success in major championships, I kind of get a little bit of rich Man's Web Simpson. That might feel insulting, but Web Simpson was a great player for a long time. And when you look at the golf courses where those two have similar success with the win of the players Windham, Sony, Scottsdale, Harbor Town, these kind of crafty, a lot of wedges, short game putting, those tend to be the types of courses that Justin Thomas has done fairly well on. And when you talk about major championships, a key differentiator between major championships and courses like those is length and having to hit driver well and accurately often. I mean, it depends on the setup, but Justin Thomas has always been a below accurate driver, So if he's now losing a little bit of distance to the field, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that going forward, you'll see him do well on a lot of these softer setups and struggle on some of these major championship like setups.

00:32:51
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it's funny.

00:32:53
Speaker 3: It makes me think of the Eduardo Molinari pod that you did on this channel couple of weeks ago, where he talked about like, you know, oh, you have to drive it extraordinary at Augusta National, and everybody's always like, justin Thomas' entire career, it's been like, this guy's game is perfect for Augusta National, Like look at you know, he is a great iron player, without a doubt, one of the best iron players in the world. But like, what always gets underrated about Augusta National is that driving accuracy aspect of it. You have to drive It's advantageous to drive it long, but you also have to drive it well because that gets you into position to use your advantage with the irons. And I think that's probably the thing that's held him back at Augusta National is just frankly, not driving the ball as well as a lot of other players.

00:33:54
Speaker 2: The thirteenth pol A Augusta has given him a lot of issues and off the tea in particular, where JT is not super comfortable hitting a draw or even hitting something fairly straight like, tends to hit that cut and he's wiped a bunch of those into the pine straw on the right hand side there. So that's always something to watch with JT. And kind of hits on that point of him not being necessarily that accurate. Off of the T, he tends to hit about fifty five percent of his fairways. He's nowhere near as accurate as somebody like Scotti Scheffler. And to be the best in the world, you can't be giving up shots like that. Andy on the Masters struggles, I was just pulling his strokes gained by major, So strokes gained around by major, How do you think he's fared in each one? If you had to rank them top to bottom, what would your guest be.

00:34:43
Speaker 3: PGA, by far and away his best major. I would guess that his next best major is the Open, followed by the Map or by the US Open, and then the the uh the Masters.

00:35:05
Speaker 2: Putting you on the spot here, So you're right, PGA is by far the best positive one point eight strokes around. That's not adjusted for field strength, but by far and away, that's been his best and he has two wins at a PGA, so not shocking. Next is actually the Masters. At about a stroke per round, he's been okay, but he hasn't really threatened to win at all.

00:35:26
Speaker 3: And then that, well, I I want to he'd had the one a couple of years ago where he hit the ball in the water on Saturday on thirteen where it really looked like he was going to win maybe on Sunday. Yeah, it was one he that was that was a great run that he had there, because you know, like I always I like to base, like I think people get too caught up and looking at Wikipedia pages, and I think like one way to like think about majors is like, was there a point in in the in on the weekend where I thought this guy's gonna win the tournament? Because you know, it's like he absolutely felt like he was gonna win the Masters and it would have been twenty.

00:36:13
Speaker 1: Twenty two and finished T eight.

00:36:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, finish T eight. So like we've danced around this subject. So he's got two major wins, he only has one other top five in a major.

00:36:25
Speaker 2: I was like shocked, it's crazy Andy. Since twenty sixteen, he's played in thirty four majors, thirty four of the thirty five majors that have happened, So that was his first full year of majors he's played. He's only missed one. So only five golfers have played more majors than he has in that span. Do you know how many top tens he has in those thirty four starts?

00:36:46
Speaker 1: Four eight, hey eight.

00:36:48
Speaker 2: That's the same number as Tommy Fleetwood and Cam Smith in that period. It's the eleventh highest total. It's not a top five total. And that includes JT's best years of golf. And in terms of top I did top ten percentage of golfers with at least ten starts over that span. JT's at twenty three percent. And you compare that to guys like Scheffler fifty seven percent, Rory fifty four percent, Xander fifty percent. The best players in the world are getting top tens and majors at about a fifty percent clip, and JT's been at twenty three percent. I mean, it's just nowhere near up to those standards.

00:37:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, I you know, I think like you have to be.

00:37:30
Speaker 3: In today's day and age, like you have to have like an otherworldly skill. But also important is not having any categorical weakness across across the board. And I think like where JT. JT is like extraordinarily great with irons and wedges, but the driver and the putter can be like a problem, Whereas like you look at Sky Scheffler, Sure the putter can be an issue, but everything else show up every single day. It kind of speaks to that consistency.

00:38:03
Speaker 1: That you were talking about. Same with with Rory.

00:38:06
Speaker 3: Rory's like he's rock solid with every you know, like sure like people can say, ohwas wedge play can be disappointing at times, but the driver's always there. The long iron play has always been great, and the short game is really good, and then the putting is above average.

00:38:26
Speaker 2: I think that's a good point with Rory too, that if you're going to look at the wedges, and this is something that has to be called out with Justin Thomas, some of the fewest wedges you're gonna have are major championships. So when your strength is wedge play and leaning on that, and then you get to a golf course that's seventy four seventy five hundred yards and maybe cold and windy sticking wedges to five feet if that's the way that you win off and on tour, which to an extent, that is kind of how Justin Thomas has had a lot of his success that goes away a little bit in major championships, and I think that's relevant to the Justin Thomas story. The lack of drive, the driving and can consistency combined with sort of mitigating one of his biggest strengths.

00:39:04
Speaker 3: I think though, like one of the things if we just discussed majors, it would be a little bit of I think like missing some of like the Justin Thomas folklore. Like I think like Justin Thomas has been lionized as this great Ryder Cup President's Cup player. Why that is, I think is because match play. If the golf played more match play, I think Justin Thomas would be a more highly thought of player because that variability wouldn't be as penalized. The idea of getting hot and hitting iron shots close like match play lends itself more to the style of play that Justin Thomas has, where really great shots, really extraordinary outcomes are rewarded more highly than just middle of the green all day long, par par par I'm not going to make a big number and I'm just going to run into four birdies every round. Like match play, it accentuates the dramatics a little bit more and also allows a player with the shot shaping capabilities of him to put those on display and reach pins that others can't get to.

00:40:25
Speaker 2: I think with that, Andy, this gets to the charisma of his game that you were talking about. I do think match plays a little bit of a different animal, not just with some of your bad shots being penalized less because a seven and making a seven and making a five are often the same thing. In match play, you're going to lose the hole either way. But I do think there's a little bit of a gamesmanship and athleticism that JT has and getting in your face a little bit. I think it can be overblown when people are advocating for him to make the Ryder Cup team, like in twenty twenty three when he was fully out of form. But I do believe JT is one of those guys who elevates his game in those high pressure situations. And if every week we're match play, I think a lot of guys would be intimidated by him.

00:41:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's that's totally right. He has like a yeah as he's an attitude about him, Like I think he has a way to he gets under his competitors skin, you know, I like I you know, I know he gets under the European Tour of European skin. You know, whether or not he's playing well, he's going to bother them. And I think it's like a match play trait and it's like one of those things where like I think Justin Thomas's best golf would be if if the tour played more match play, it would it would just make him a bigger star. I was going to ask you, like, what's your favorite Justin Thomas win or moment as a professional?

00:42:01
Speaker 2: It might it might be dumb to pick something that's not the most high profile, but I just his win at Sony in twenty seventeen where he won by seven. Yeah, after he had won the week he won the week before by three at Kapelua and then he won by seven at Sony and it was like, all right, this guy might burn the world down this year. And then he went on to win the PGA that year twenty seventeen at Quail Hollow. I just distinctly remember that Sony open and thinking like, yeah, I don't know how many golfers can hang with him.

00:42:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what's crazy about where we're at now. It doesn't feel that long ago where it was, oh, this guy, like who's the best player in the world.

00:42:45
Speaker 1: It was short list.

00:42:46
Speaker 3: I think, like, why we're having this discussion is like now it might not be there for me.

00:42:51
Speaker 1: It's the it's the players win. I was at the time. I was I was I was the.

00:42:59
Speaker 3: Main of West Island Lee Westwood Island, and I was I was looking at that and I you know, I was, I was rooting for Westwood and like you could just see uh, JT barreling down and there was there was just this this absolute terrifying nature of JT where you're, oh, he's gonna win, Like there's there was no doubt in my mind. When they made the turn, I think he birdied nine. Oh, this is over. JT is gonna win. And I think like in that tournament also just with the weather, he hit some just incredible shots. I think it was on Saturday. The shot making was just out of this world. In the in the weather, and it was just an example of like, like, this is an era where you don't need to play a lot of shots, but to me, like some of the most memorable rounds of the last ten years to bend JT, and they all revolve around really bad ways there in him hitting shots that other people don't have. So that makes me, it just kind of makes me sad. Like I think he's pretty vehemently against the rollback, but I think he's also one of the players that would be most most rewarded if equipment was rolled back, not just the ball but smaller driver has because I think he's sublimely like supremely talented compared to his peers with some of the shaping the ability to hit shots.

00:44:28
Speaker 2: I think those elite ball strikers who struggle with the putter you're talking about candidates for benefiting from a rollback. So yeah, I think JT should be in support of it, if at least if he were concerned about his career foremost, Andy, what do you think twenty twenty five? I don't know. I don't want to jump the shark, but I had a what do you think a realistic expectations for him in twenty twenty five. Like, that's a big question I have is where do you think he stacks up in the world.

00:44:54
Speaker 3: I'd love to see him try going to broom. We've seen this, Like, I just would like to say, I'm sure. I don't know if he's experimented with it. I think there's like a lot of people that have a lot of pride that that stops them from doing this. But I think the puttings at a level that this should be considered an option or some alternative putting style because what's going on right now isn't working for him. That being said, like I was like pretty encouraged by last year. I thought the iron play got The iron play was bad in twenty three. In twenty twenty three, it was by his standards, it is the worst it's ever been. And I think like twenty twenty four the iron play was back. It's just like he would have won a couple of tournaments if he if he just wasn't one of the worst putters on tour.

00:45:54
Speaker 2: Do you think it's sound stick for him to be a top five player in the world.

00:45:57
Speaker 1: Again, I don't.

00:45:58
Speaker 3: I don't think he's a he's I think we're at the point where you know, if he's if he's puts well, he's a top ten guy. If he puts kind of at his career average, he's probably like a top top fifteen player.

00:46:14
Speaker 1: What about you, I'm with you.

00:46:15
Speaker 2: I think what I have written down is that I think the bowl case for JT is being like the seventh best golfer in the world. I think he's pretty far from that. Scottie Xander Tier clearly, and Rom and Rory right behind it. I don't really think he's that close to threatening any of those four. And then you just think about all the youth Ludwig Morikawa, Obert. Him getting past multiple of those guys I think is highly, highly unlikely. And I guess the outcome I'm expecting is that JT is somewhere around the twelfth best golfer in the world over the next couple of years. That feels like a pretty realistic expectation with honestly not a ton of success in majors.

00:46:58
Speaker 3: I mean, like the at that level, there's still majors to pick off. But you know, to me, it seems like probably like if he gets a third major, that's a big win at this point.

00:47:12
Speaker 1: And but I'm not gonna write him off in majors.

00:47:15
Speaker 3: I think he can win one or two more, and I think he could probably win ten more PGA Tour events in his career. Maybe it might be a little lower, It might be a little lower, seven seven, seven and one possible. I think, like, realistically, how many PGA Tour events do I think he hasn't won one in two and a half years, so I would probably say, you know, five.

00:47:40
Speaker 1: More PGA Tour wins. What would you say? If I was gonna set it over under.

00:47:46
Speaker 2: At five, I would take the under. Assuming he's going to play mostly signature events. I mean if he shows up to AMX, yeah, right, like that that seriously changes it. But high profile events, I would take the under on five.

00:48:01
Speaker 1: Okay, that's that's interesting.

00:48:04
Speaker 3: I think like one thing that to note, like, I'd be curious and I don't know if you have the numbers in front of you you hit on the ball speed increase over time or lack thereof. Yeah, yeah, I'd be interested, Like someone like Rory McElroy what he's been able to do in the same period. I think he's had considerable ball speed gains, yes, And I think that's like kind of the difference between Rory, who's been able to kind of endure and can stay at elite level versus a lot of his peers.

00:48:39
Speaker 2: And I think that's the right way to think about it, Andy, is that we might see some of these golfers who are highly talented, who are play unbelievable golf for five ish years, like Justin Thomas, and very few only the legends, the once in a ten to fifteen year type of golfers are going to play ten to twelve years of good golf. And we're talking about Rory, maybe Scheffler, We'll see like maybe Rom Speith and JT looked like that, and neither one of them is going to end up playing likely playing twelve year careers.

00:49:16
Speaker 3: I think that's high high level golf, high high level. Yeah right, Like that's yeah, so.

00:49:22
Speaker 2: Top fifteen level golf.

00:49:26
Speaker 3: All right, Well that's the case for the case of where we're at with JT. This was a fun chat, Joseph. Let's get to recommendations. What are you recommending?

00:49:37
Speaker 2: This is an easy one for me. I don't watch a ton of TV, but I've started watching The Penguin on HBO. Do you know what that is? Andy?

00:49:44
Speaker 1: This is a Batman spinoff it.

00:49:47
Speaker 2: Is, and I'm not even into the comic book series and stuff, but The Penguin is excellent profiles the Penguin that the villains rise to notoriety in Gotham. It's very well reviewed. I haven't onto the fourth episode yet, but apparently the fourth episode is like one of the best episodes of TV in a while. Two episodes in and haven't been this invested in the show in a while. So full full recommendation on The Penguin.

00:50:12
Speaker 3: Penguin all right, My recommendation is for parents of young kids.

00:50:19
Speaker 1: Uh, screen time is a very hard thing TV.

00:50:25
Speaker 3: You need to get stuff done. It like becomes like an inevitable thing. Then and then you're you notice that your kid is like different when they watch TV early in the day or different when they were they watch a lot of TV versus little TV, that you're able to give them.

00:50:43
Speaker 1: A lot of time.

00:50:44
Speaker 3: Something that we've we've discovered that's been really great is like there are these like audio stories on for kids on Spotify, and we just like put those on and what we've noticed our daughter like will listen to it and play at the same time by herself. So if you like need to cook dinner. It's like a really nice like thing you can put on.

00:51:10
Speaker 1: And get thirty minutes or forty minutes a and.

00:51:14
Speaker 3: It's not the TV, which like I'm like very uh, I've become recently very opposed to the television. I like, actually like it, really dislike it and what it.

00:51:26
Speaker 1: Does to kids. So anyways, that's my little tip for parents of young children.

00:51:31
Speaker 2: Does she fall asleep to the audio books?

00:51:33
Speaker 3: No, No, it's like she'll just like sit and play and listen to Beauty and the Beast forty five minute telling of Beauty the Beast.

00:51:42
Speaker 2: Because you've been I know you've been mounting a war on listening to podcast as you fall asleep. And if I found out that your daughter's listening to audiobooks to fall asleep, that would have been quite a hypocritical stance.

00:51:54
Speaker 3: That wouldn't happened. Just it's clear that you don't have a young child, because you know that would not they would fall asleep to that. So so anyways, that's that's my recommendation. We'll be back later this week with another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. Big thanks to PJ Clark for editing and producing this episode. PJ I hope, I hope tonight tonight, this is Sunday Night. Votes well for your mets and you keep the dream alive. If you haven't yet, check out our our membership Club TF. It is one hundred and twenty dollars a year and we put up a ton of content. We're really proud also of the community it's built. I was out at an event last week and a member was telling me about how he's he met his like best golf buddy through Club TF. In the comments section, they found out that they were members at the same club and they've become you know, they play a ton of golf together now, so it's a it's neat to hear those stories. I'm really excited about where it's going, and hopefully we'll make some strides on making the community even better in twenty twenty five. So thanks everybody this joined. If you haven't checked it out yet, check it out. It is at the Friday dot Com slash membership. All right, thanks for listening. We'll be back again this week.