Justin Thomas: Birdie Machine

Despite some nagging injuries, I’m posting the best birdie-or-better rate of my career. I credit my approach shots—I’m stuffing it this year, and not just from short range. Interested? Here’s how I stick it with every club in the bag.

- Luke Kerr-Dineen

Justin Thomas isn’t your prototypical modern-day professional athlete. At 5’ 10” and 160 pounds soaking wet, his slender frame hasn’t stopped him from gracing the top of the sport at every level he’s played. A standout talent in junior and college golf, Thomas has become one of the most feared and emulated players in the game today.

It’s easy to focus on Thomas’s power, especially when he’s got driver in his hands. The Kentucky native and proud University of Alabama alum owns a flashy and freewheeling swing that’s built for speed, and it’s helped him become one of the best pound-for-pound drivers of the ball in the game’s history. But while Thomas’s ability to generate power remains his most acknowledged skill, it often overshadows another standout element of his game: his elite-level accuracy from the fairway.

To say that Thomas, now 26, is deadly when hunting flagsticks isn’t hyperbole: Over the past three seasons, this one included, Thomas has placed sixth, fourth and is currently fifth in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green. In 2017 he led the PGA Tour in approach-shot proximity to the pin on swings taken between 50 and 125 yards of the green. The following year, he finished inside the top 10 in the 200- to 250-yard range. His pinpoint accuracy from seemingly every distance is why he ranked third, third and first in scoring average over the past three seasons. Justin Thomas may be a bomber off the tee, but he’s a sniper coming into greens. Better yet, he knows how to finish the job. At the time of this writing, Thomas’s birdie-or-better percentage of 28.6 is bordering on historical.