Justin Thomas encouraged by left-hand-low putting at Genesis Scottish Open

GULLANE, Scotland – In his best season, 2017, Justin Thomas was 43rd in Strokes Gained: Putting and won five times, including his first PGA Championship. He won the season-long FedExCup.

Fast-forward to today and Thomas, a 15-time PGA TOUR winner, is 147th in Strokes Gained: Putting (-.262). He hasn’t won in over a year, and at 70th in the FedExCup is on the bubble to make the (top-70) FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first stop in the FedExCup Playoffs.

Something had to give.

Thomas decided to try cross-handed putting in the first round of the Genesis Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club on Thursday. It went pretty well, as he took 28 putts and shot a 2-under 68.

“Not much on TOUR,” he said, when asked how often he’s deployed the left-hand-low grip. “I’ve done it randomly here and there. I did it in junior golf some, I won a couple college tournaments doing it. I used to change and tinker with stuff a lot more, kind of like mid-round.

“I remember our tournament, the Jerry Pate, my freshman year,” he continued. “I wasn’t putting good, and I just said screw it, I’m putting cross-handed, and I won by like five or six that week.”

This season has been a slog for Thomas, who admits that his putting woes have begun to creep into the rest of his game. He shot a second-round 81 to miss the cut at the U.S. Open last month, which caught him off-guard and was, he said, perhaps the low point of his professional career.

After signing for an opening-round 76 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit two weeks ago, Thomas, perhaps figuring he had nothing to lose, used a left-hand-low grip on the back nine of his second round. He shot 69, and while he missed the cut, he was sufficiently encouraged to try the grip at the Genesis Scottish from the get-go.

So far, so good.

“I felt like there were definitely a couple putts I could have made,” he said. “My lag putting was tremendous today, which to me was the biggest question mark coming in. I feel like my hands are something that I use to my advantage, and changing that up, trying to hit putts from 60, 70, 80 feet, I wasn’t sure if I was going to go conventional or not.”

He went cross-handed even on the long ones, and as with his practice rounds, it went well. His round would have been even better had he not wound up in a couple of pot bunkers, from which he failed to save par.

Thomas made non-golf headlines this week as he and Jordan Spieth are set to become minority owners of the Leeds United soccer club. Spieth told Sky TV that the two longtime friends have invested in the San Francisco 49ers’ ownership group, 49ers Enterprises, which is taking over the recently relegated Leeds club.

It came as something of a surprise even to Thomas himself.

“It was totally random,” he said. “Someone, I guess, that Jordan knew came to him with the opportunity, and the ball kept rolling and we ended up there. Being a sports fan – if you had told me when I was 15, your first step into sports franchises was going to be a football club, I’d have been like, ‘Which division? Is it AFC South?’ (Laughs) It’s cool to be part of something like that, but at the same time you don’t do it to be cool.”

What would be coolest of all is if Thomas could finally get his putting on track, especially with just four tournaments remaining before the start of the FedExCup Playoffs.

“It’s hard to get yourself to belief that tomorrow could be the day, or this could be the shot or this could be the round,” he said. “…I’m trying to not think about things that are happening or could happen down the line, or the Playoffs, or trying to make this or that because I remember doing that my rookie year or trying to make the TOUR Championship my second year, really fighting to try to make the Ryder Cup. Nothing good comes from that.

“I just have to go out and try to play the best I possibly can,” he continued, “and try to win golf tournaments and get in contention and good stuff will happen.”