Honesty is the best policy but, in the delicate world of sport, honesty isn’t always displayed when a competitor finds themselves in front of a microphone.
How refreshing it was, then, to find Justin Thomas making no attempt to play down his feelings towards his rivals. With mischief in mind and a fire burning inside, he listened to the incessant rain battering the tarpaulin that was providing protection for him, and he began to smile.
‘Am I still in with a chance? For sure,’ Thomas began. ‘If I’m being perfectly honest, I hope it continues to rain and gets windy. I think I’d be crazy if I said otherwise. I did my part and I just gotta hope for the best.’
This wasn’t quite Jurgen Klopp saying something similar to Liverpool’s squad before their epic Champions League semi-final comeback against Barcelona in 2019, but it was in the same ballpark. Thomas, after all, is a man well capable of pulling something out of the fire.
To refresh the memory, let’s return to the USPGA Championship of 2022 at Southern Hills in Tulsa. A third-round calamity left Thomas seven shots off the pace, with six men ahead of him. But he turned it around in the most incredible fashion and beat Will Zalatoris in a play-off to win.
Justin Thomas hailed the Troon monsoon as Open rain check put him in reach of the Claret Jug
Spectators shelter from the wind and rain during the third round of the Open Championship
Be in no doubt that Thomas is a big game hunter, a dual major champion with the game and the aura to get involved in the thick of it late this evening if it all starts coming together early on. All it needs is for one ball to drop in the first couple of holes and the required fire suddenly has a spark.
Thomas had played superbly for much of Saturday morning and a front nine birdie blitz enabled him to start rectifying the damage that he had suffered on Friday. Having opened with a 68, he was blown asunder in round two and a 78 had sent him slithering down the field.
Nothing, though, is out of the question in this tournament, so when Thomas’s putter started running hot, you simply had to take notice. Easing himself into a rhythm like a batsman negotiating the tricky new ball, two pars settled his nerves. Then he began to fly.
He only needed 19 shots to get from the third tee to the eighth green, five birdies and a par, sending him zooming through the pack. The third round in any golf tournament is known as ‘moving day’ and this 31-year-old was in a hurry. You had to wonder, seeing this, how Friday had been so bad.
‘That’s golf,’ he said, again leaving nothing to interpretation.
‘Golf is how I would sum it up. It’s a crazy sport and a lot of things can happen in a lot of conditions. But that’s what I signed up for.
‘I just felt good enough about my game where I could be aggressive off the tees and capitalise. It was nice.’ What was particularly impressive, though, was the teeth gritting in the latter stages of the round.
Thomas is a man well capable of pulling something out of the fire as he showed in the USPGA Championship of 2022
The wind hadn’t got up as he and Matteo Manassero spun for home. But the rain rolled in over Ailsa Craig and soaked them to the bone, making ball striking and club gripping an issue.
‘You can’t be greedy, not on this back nine,’ Thomas said. ‘Although the wind was very calm, it did switch and go more northwest, and you could feel it getting cold.
‘You could smell the rain coming. It was quite bizarre.’
Having looked like he might be on course to finish with a six-under-par 65 after birdieing the 12th, dropping shots in two of the next three holes was a nuisance. It didn’t reflect the way he was playing, though, and the quality of one drive down 16 was a pure and true as you could wish to see.
‘They did a great job on the golf course and setting it up in terms of the rough,’Thomas said. ‘You can get out of it. It’s patchy in places. But when it gets wet, it plays completely different. I just was really focusing on trying to get the ball on the fairway, which I had done well before that.
‘Then if I got an opportunity on 16 or 17 where I had a birdie look. Obviously I wanted to make it, but it’s just not really the time to be greedy. It’s more in your head, and your thought process on everything is definitely different.’
Thomas’ quality of one drive down 16 was a pure and true as you could wish to see
It won’t be easy. Thomas’s chances might even be dismissed already with him being on level-par for the tournament but, from time to time, you will stand with a sportsman and pick up on what they are feeling.
Here is a man who thinks he can go close. If Thomas starts draining putts and hitting greens, plenty of others will think the same, too.