DETROIT – Max Homa, Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa are three of the biggest names at this week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic. But they all have used the word “frustrating” to describe their level of satisfaction with their game of late.
Golf is mental and for Thomas, who said shooting 81 to miss the cut at the U.S. Open two weeks ago was “the lowest I’ve felt,” the turning point may have been a late-night text from his wife last Wednesday on the eve of the Travelers Championship.
“Just basically said remember why you love this game and why you play this game and why you’re out there, just enjoy that and kind of take it in,” Thomas recalled on Wednesday during a pre-tournament press conference. “It hit home for me…It really hit home better than anything I’ve heard.”
Thomas went on to explain that he focuses on his mental game with the same intensity that he tries to improve his wedge game, which is world class.
“I try to learn from it like I do every tournament,” Thomas said. “I think after it was done long enough and I was able to reflect, I learned a lot from the U.S. Open. I felt like I was playing – I know I was playing the best golf that I’ve played in a really long time. I mean, I’m talking two, three, four, five years. Because of that, my expectations got up and I fully expected to go win that golf tournament.”
Thomas blamed his poor week at the U.S. Open on concentrating too much on swing mechanics and not on simply trying to get the ball into the hole.
“That got in the way,” he said. “Last week I wasn’t feeling great about my golf swing in the beginning of the week and I kind of said, ‘Screw it, I’m just going to go out here and hit shots and play golf.’ I’ll use the practice rounds, the pro-am, the time on the range to really kind of hammer down the things in my swing mechanically I want to work on, but then when I’m out there, I just need to go play.”
After a sluggish opening round, Thomas’s game came to life, capped off by a third-round 62 at TPC River Highlands, or 19 shots better than he’d shot at LACC eight days earlier. Thomas finished T-9, his first top-10 finish since the WM Phoenix Open in February. He improved to No. 66 in the FedEx Cup, just inside the top 70 who will qualify for the Playoffs but unless he gets his act together, he is in danger of missing the Tour Championship – top 30 qualify – for the first time in eight years.
Collin Morikawa’s season to date has been slightly better – he’s currently No. 32 in the FedEx Cup – but he hasn’t won since the 2021 British Open and is without a top-10 finish since the Masters in April, and is coming off a missed cut last week in Hartford.
“Winning to me is everything,” Morikawa said. “You’ve got to learn how to close, you’ve got to be able to do it.”
Last month at the Memorial he was in contention heading into Sunday but injured his back and was forced to withdraw.
“It sucked at Memorial because obviously I hurt myself and I was two back. Being two back at that course, you make one birdie in the first four holes, you might be tied for the lead, right?” he said. “So it’s just putting myself in contention, giving myself three days of good golf to get there to Sunday to be in contention, right? I’ve kind of put myself behind the eight-ball recently playing some bad first rounds, trying to climb back up second, third, fourth round. It’s hard to win tournaments like that.”
Morikawa said the biggest difference in his game during his winless drought is his inability to eliminate the left side of the course as he did when he was winning two majors and reaching world No. 2. (He has slipped to No. 20.)
“When I was playing my best, when I was winning, I could swing as hard as I’d want and the ball was never going left,” he said.
It would be a mistake for Homa to get too down on himself after missing his second straight cut and having the weekend off for the fourth time in his last seven starts. During the 2016-17 he made just two cuts in 17 starts and earned $18,008. In comparison, this season he’s won twice and banked north of $8.5 million in 18 starts. He’s No. 3 in the FedEx Cup standings in what could only be considered a banner year, but he’s also hit a bump in the road as he makes the turn to the season’s final major and FedEx Cup Playoffs.
“I’m coming off two missed cuts and I guess typically maybe a year or so prior I would try to reinvent the wheel. But everything feels great, just golf is a mean, mean game,” he said. “So my goals are just to go keep playing golf the way I play, kind of make it feel like I’m at home and just enjoy my time and wait for golf to love me again a little bit.”
For many players, the frustration of falling short of their expectations can be the biggest mental hurdle of all. Homa is taking it all in stride and scoffed at the suggestion he was in a mini slump.
“I would not quite call this one a slump,” he said. “My last round I played was a bogey-free round, so in my actual slump I had a lot more birdie-free rounds, so I think I’m sitting just fine.”
Thomas also chose to look at the glass as half full as he attempts to emerge from his rough patch.
“I’m just a couple events away from being right there,” he said. “And a lot of things can happen. The unknown is the fun and bad part about this game, so we’ll see where it takes us.”
In the Motor City, it wouldn’t be surprising if any or all three start firing on all cylinders again.
