It’s been an odd week for Justin Thomas.
Six days ago, he made a fantastic ace at the WGC-Mexico Championship on his way to the 54-hole lead. But Thomas would close in 1-over 72 to drop to a tie for fifth. And five days later, he’s not making the weekend at all at his next event.
The 23-year-old fired a 3-over 74 on Friday at the Valspar Championship, pushing him to 3 over through 36 holes. With the cut coming in at even par, this meant an early exit for Thomas.
It’s certainly been a struggle at times of late for Thomas, who was one of the hottest players in the world just two months ago when he won in back-to-back weeks at the SBS Tournament of Champions and the Sony Open. Thomas also won the CIMB Classic in October, meaning he had three wins in his first five starts of the 2016-17 PGA Tour season.
Now, he has just as many missed cuts in his last five starts, falling short of the weekend at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and the Honda Classic before coming up short at the Valspar Championship.
Putting’s been a concern of late, as Thomas lost strokes to the field on the greens in each of his three starts in his MC-T39-MC stretch from Phoenix to the Genesis Open to the Honda Classic.
But this week he had a different issue: His health.
Thomas may have been staying in an awesome mansion at the Valspar Championship, but he certainly wasn’t 100 percent.
Dealing with a sinus infection and a stomach bug earlier in the week, Thomas was off from the start at the Valspar Championship and withdrew from Wednesday’s pro-am because of his health.
While his sinus issues cleared up by Round 1, he said that his stomach problems hadn’t disappeared.
“Stomach still isn’t great, but I mean, just don’t have a lot of energy, or I didn’t today,” Thomas said Thursday following his opening-round 71. “I try to save my energy. I walked really, really slow out there and was trying to drink a lot of water and just trying to stay hydrated.”
Oddly, Thomas felt fine in Mexico, where a number of players came down with a stomach bug, and only developed his own a week later back in the U.S.
“A lot of people got sick or weren’t feeling well, but I was great (in Mexico),” Thomas said on Thursday. “I don’t know what it was, whether it was the change in altitude or something I ate before I left, but things haven’t been settling well the last couple days.”
It’s unclear what Thomas’ health was like on Friday, but regardless, he won’t be competing at Innisbrook’s Copperhead Course for the weekend.
Three missed cuts in five starts is disconcerting for the FedEx Cup leader and World No. 7. Thomas has already said he’ll miss next week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational in order to attend the wedding of one of his best friends and former college teammates.
That friend would be Trey Mullinax, who will wed his high school sweetheart Abi Essman next week. (Thomas and Mullinax won a national title together at Alabama in 2012-13.)
That leaves only two potential starts between now and the Masters: the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play and the Shell Houston Open.
One of golf’s hottest players of two months ago may be going into the year’s first major having missed three of five cuts (in events with cuts, that is).
We’ll see how things shake out in a few weeks, but Thomas’ game isn’t trending in a great direction at the moment.
– Brentley Romine contributed to this story
