Until he teed up a ball at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in early March of this season, Justin Thomas might have had doubts about his future as a top professional golfer.
He had undergone microdiscectomy surgery for nagging hip pain, which ended his 2025 season in mid-November. Even though he missed the cut at Bay Hill, the ability to play 36 holes pain-free justified his decision and the grueling, yet uncertain road to a full recovery.
"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."
One week later, Thomas finished T8 in the Players Championship. He made the cut at the Masters, and two weeks ago finished with a 5-under par score of 65 to finish in a tie for fourth at the PGA Championship.
Thomas, 33, won the 2017 and 2022 PGA Championships, among his 16 tour titles. He took last week off, but will play Colonial CC for the first time 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."
With the recent discussions regarding elevated PGA Tour events, Thomas was asked about how he decides which events he will play.
"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 will play with Russell Henley and Korea's Sungjae Im and will get underway at 8:06 a.m. local time on Thursday.
Ben Griffin won the Charles Schwab Challenge by one stroke over Germany's Matti Schmid in 2025.
--Field Level Media
