Professional golfer Justin Thomas was questioning whether his career at golf’s highest level could continue before he stepped onto the course at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in early March this season.
Thomas had received microdiscectomy surgery to address persistent hip discomfort, forcing an early end to his 2025 campaign in mid-November. Despite missing the cut at Bay Hill, completing 36 holes without pain validated his choice and the challenging, uncertain path back to full health.
“I had confidence and belief and faith in what I was doing was the best thing for me and my career,” said Thomas on Wednesday before he tees it up for the ninth time this season at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth Texas.
“And that’s, you know, after all the information, everything that I had kind of gathered and talking, reading, whatever you want to call it, I felt like that was what it was. So it wasn’t necessarily a moment after the fact, because I felt like I had already kind of committed to that. But it’s also not something of like once you’ve hit that first driver and it feels good you’re like, OK, I’m good the rest of my life, I don’t have to worry about this ever again. It’s like everything, it’s a process and you got to keep working on it.”
Seven days after that tournament, Thomas placed T8 at the Players Championship. He advanced past the cut at the Masters, and recently carded a 5-under par 65 to claim a tie for fourth place at the PGA Championship.
The 33-year-old Thomas captured the 2017 and 2022 PGA Championships as part of his 16 tour victories. He sat out last week but will return to Colonial CC for his first appearance there since 2022.
“Yeah, probably wasn’t quite as much relaxing as it maybe could have gone for,” said Thomas. “But to go out there and play the round I did when I knew I needed to was great and, yeah, last week just was really a couple days off and then back to the grind.”
When asked about his tournament selection process amid ongoing talks about elevated PGA Tour events, Thomas explained his approach.
“Everybody’s different. I would say the most, the first and foremost, most important thing that a lot of the top guys… anybody that’s in the majors, you’re going to at least I would think, is what’s going to prepare me the best for the major,” he said. “So like I’ve had success in majors when I play the week before.
“So it’s very situational of when you play, don’t play in that regard. But I mean I really, really, really try with all my might to not do four in a row. Four in a row is like I’m not fun to be around. It’s very taxing. So I try to cap it at three. And, yeah, there’s a lot of great tournaments, we’re very fortunate to have to miss some great events, but you have to at some point. So just kind of start with the majors and fill it in here and there, I guess.”
Thomas is grouped with Russell Henley and Korea’s Sungjae Im for an 8:06 a.m. local time Thursday start.
Ben Griffin captured the Charles Schwab Challenge by one stroke over Germany’s Matti Schmid in 2025.
