MATURE MAN RISING

Justin Thomas refuses to look too far ahead these days.

Forget the fact he has virtually locked up a spot in the TOUR Championship and a shot at the FedExCup. Forget the fact he will almost certainly join Team USA in the Presidents Cup. Forget the fact he is now just outside the top 10 in the world.

After claiming his second win of the season, Thomas is already shifting his thinking to the Sony Open next week – albeit with a slight detour in focus heading towards his alma mater Alabama and their national championship football game against Clemson on Monday.

The maturity growth is quite visible. Thomas has gone from a sometimes-frustrated kid - stuck around the shadows of fellow young stars like Jordan Spieth, and the man he conquered again in Hideki Matsuyama - to a determined young man carving out a significant narrative of his own.

“I think it drove me a lot. I wasn't mad, but it was maybe a little frustrating sometimes seeing some friends and peers my age do well,” Thomas admitted.

“Not because I wasn't cheering for them because I feel like I was as good as them. It's just immature of me. I mean, the fact of the matter is, over the course of a long career, we're going to beat each other. That's just how it is.



“I think now, I feel so much more comfortable. I really do. Maybe the first time in Malaysia when I won, I was maybe kind of like, what am I doing here, but now it's like, okay, I belong here, I should be here.”

Spieth is expecting the great form to be far from fleeting. He was there to congratulate his friend on the 18th green.

“I think it's potentially floodgates opening,” he said of Thomas.

“The guy hits it forever. He's got a really, really nifty short game. He manages the course well.

“So really excited for him. It's awesome. It's awesome to see. He's going to be tough to beat next week, too.”

Thomas prefers to keep his goals secret but did reveal he’s far from satisfied with just the two wins in 2016-17.

“I still have plenty of other goals that I would like to achieve and stuff that's over the long-term, the course of the year,” Thomas said.



“I'm going to have to regroup and focus on next week, because next week is a course that I really like and I feel like another good opportunity for me to be in the hunt and have a chance to win.



“I think that's where I'm growing a little bit more in that it's week-to-week. It's not looking at previous weeks when I'm at a tournament or looking at following events when I'm at a tournament; it's I am focusing on that week. And once it's over, take the positives, try to blow over the negatives and go on to the next.”