Justin Thomas reveals how crucial putting lesson from Ryder Cup teammate ended his win drought

Mark Townsend
Justin Thomas

In the past couple of years Justin Thomas’ putter has been a cause for concern but some time with a fellow two-time Major winner has helped him to find the bottom of the cup more often again.

Thomas captured the RBC Heritage by rolling in a 21-foot birdie putt at the first extra hole against Andrew Novak at Harbour Town. His previous win came at the PGA Championship in 2022 and, since then, he needed a Ryder Cup pick, missed out on the FedExCup Playoffs for the first time in his career and didn’t make the Presidents Cup team in Canada.

Now, though, he is back up to sixth in the world, there have been two other second places already this term and his putting is very much back on track. In 2023 he was 135th for Strokes Gained: Putting, last year it was even worse (174th) but he is now up to 24th – at Harbour Town, where he opened up with a 61, the 31-year-old ranked third on the greens.

And part of his success is down to some time spent with his Ryder Cup teammate Xander Schauffele.

“Obviously it’s a lot of work and time spent on it but I called Xander at the end of last year because I think he’s one of the best putters in fundamentals and not just putting but everything. I was just like, can I just pick your brain for like two or three hours, just talk to you about putting?

“So he came out with me, and he just was asking me a bunch of different questions. You guys obviously know Xander, but he doesn’t leave any box unchecked. Like he said that day, if it has anything to do with you potentially improving in golf, I’ve probably done it or tried it.”

Interestingly it was more Schauffele’s questions rather than answers which got Thomas thinking the right way on the greens again.

“I just was talking to him about this process and how he reads greens and how he sees things and his practice and everything, and it honestly was just being with him. He would ask something and I was like, yeah, I used to do that. And then he was like, well, how about something like this? I used to use the string line here.

“The more I was talking, I’m like, I don’t do any of the things that I used to do in my best putting years. 2017-18, I was very, very regimented of the things that I did, and how he said it is I had a home base and I had no home base. I had things that I did, but it was a very vague bag of things and there was no consistency to it. I feel like I used to have a very good home base of fundamentals and things that I did.

“So, while he helped, it was more of the questions he asked me made me realise that I’m trying basically too hard and I’m trying too many different things versus I think it’s a serious, serious, serious skill to continue to work on the things that you do really well and not doing it differently, and I think that’s been more of what it is. I have my fundamentals and things that I do and checkpoints, and I’m sticking to them.”

Schauffele also helped Thomas to free himself up which now sees the now 16-time PGA Tour winner up into second spot on the FedEx standings.

“It’s the only part of golf you can’t really make the ball do things. If I’m not hitting it good, I can step up on the 1st tee with a driver and I can hit some kind of little low chip cut and try to just advance it, but if I don’t know or feel good over a putter, if a putt is left edge, it’s pretty much left edge. I can’t create enough.

“I’m very artistic and feel based in all of my game, and I think once I got to putting and the putting green, I turned into way too mechanical and robotic and that’s not me. I’m better off, I call it pro-am putting, when it’s like I obviously want to make a putt that I’m hitting in a pro-am but I’m not grinding on read and thinking about all these different things. I’m pretty much stepping up, give it a look and go, and how often I make putts.”

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