Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas tied for lead at Farmers Insurance Open

SAN DIEGO – The great ones find a way.

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That goes for the days when they have it, and the days when they don’t.

Justin Thomas, 28, was in total command, pelting fairways, pitching in for birdie on the second hole, and driving the par-4 seventh at Torrey Pines North on Thursday. He made it all look easy.

Jon Rahm, 27, usually does that at Torrey. He won the Farmers and U.S. Open and proposed to his wife in these parts, but was so wayward off the tee that he shot his arms into the air when he finally hit a fairway at the sixth hole.

Playing in the same group but not often playing the same game, Thomas (63, 13 under, tied for the lead) and Rahm (65, 13 under) typified the old maxim that it’s not how, it’s how many. They will go into the weekend tied with Adam Schenk (62, North) and one ahead of Cameron Tringale (65, North).

“I played well,” Thomas said after a round that could have been even better had he not missed a short birdie putt at the par-5 ninth, his last hole. “I drove it well, something you've got to do out here on the North course. I mean, both courses, but if you drive it well, you've got a lot of wedges, a lot of short holes, four par 5s.”

Rahm perfected the one-handed or no-handed follow-through as he spent most of his second nine, the front, in the right rough. Still, he limited the damage until he got hot to end the round, making birdies at 6, 7 and 8.

“I managed really well today,” he said. “It feels good because if you tell me before the round I'm going to hit four fairways and shoot 7 under, I'd tell you that something out there must have been really good, which today was. For how little fairways I hit, I was able to hit a lot of those greens from the rough, which is not the easiest thing to do.”

How did he finally find the fairway at the par-4 sixth?

“On 6, believe it or not I just said, you know, screw it, if you (don’t) hit the fairway, might as well have 80 yards (left),” he said, “and went to hit it as hard as I could and it turned out perfect.

“Holes 7 to 9 was repeating exactly what I tried to do on 6.”

Dustin Johnson, the third member of the group, shot 69 and sits at 7 under par for the tournament, six shots off the lead. He is coming off a long layoff after what he described as a disappointing season. He did not win in 2021.

Thomas won THE PLAYERS Championship last March, but his results were otherwise unspectacular. He has said he expects more from himself, as in multiple wins per season. He’s making his first appearance at the Farmers since 2015, when he missed the cut. He finished T10 in his only other start here in 2014 – his first top-10 finish on the PGA TOUR, as he noted in his press conference earlier this week.

Rahm also won once last season, at the U.S. Open. He said that halfway through this tournament it resembles neither his 2017 Farmers win, when the weather was colder and windier, nor his lone major title at Torrey last summer, when the scores were of course much higher, as they always are for a USGA setup.

“It's different, it's different,” he said. “Neither of those I had the lead. … A U.S. Open is very, very different. I believe I was 3 under through two rounds and I was thrilled with that score. At 14 under right now and I think how much better it could have been if I hit fairways, right? So, it’s not comparable.”

Thomas didn’t play particularly well for the first two rounds of the PLAYERS last year, but shot 64-68 on the weekend to prevail. Rahm has come from behind to win here twice, and now doesn’t even need to do that, thanks to his surprisingly accurate iron play from the rough Thursday. Yes, the great ones sometimes take some funny routes to the trophy ceremony, but they get there. They find a way. They always have.