Justin Thomas Needs His New Putting Technique to Pay Off Quickly

After slumping most of this season, Justin Thomas started strong in Scotland with an eye on salvaging his biggest goals for the year.

NORTH BERWICK, Scotland – Justin Thomas’s game is in a quagmire.

With four weeks left before the FedEx Cup playoffs begin and the Ryder Cup points cutoff at the BMW Championship on August 20, the two-time major winner is placing his faith on cross-handed putting and Aimpoint alignment in hopes it will lead him to the promised land and potentially a victory in the waning months of the 2023 season.

Thomas has talked about taking it one step at a time. At the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit a few weeks ago, he said, “In the past I've kind of already been looking at East Lake at this point in the season, but I'm not in that spot right now.”

Currently 68th on the FedEx Cup points list and 13th on the Ryder Cup qualifying list, Thomas has work to do. He’s missed three of this last four cuts, with the low point an 81 in the second round of the U.S. Open at the Los Angeles Country Club.

At the Wells Fargo Championship he began using the AimPoint green-reading technique, a method used by many on Tour including Adam Scott and Justin Rose. The concept involves using your feet to feel the slope of the green by straddling the presumed path of the putt.

While not a difficult method to use, it does have a learning curve. But Thomas appears to be making progress.

“For me, putting is the biggest part of it, it definitely seems to spread throughout the bag, and I feel like I've been putting a lot better than the results or stats have shown but at the end of the day, if the ball is not going in the hole you're not putting well,” Thomas said after signing for a 2-under 68 in Thursday’s first round of the Scottish Open. “So, just got to get the ball going in the hole a little more often and just start getting a little bit more confidence. Look at someone like Rick (Fowler). Once he got that confidence back, he's in contention basically every week he plays now and that's just kind of something along similar lines of what I'm looking for.”

After AimPoint, Thomas added a crossed-handed stroke. His familiarity with that technique goes back to high school golf. Halfway through his second round in Detroit, where Thomas would miss the cut, decided to try putting cross-handed.

“I did it in junior golf, some, I won a couple of college tournaments doing it,” Thomas said of cross handed putting. “I used to change and tinker with stuff a lot more kind of like mid-round.”

Thomas talked about playing in the 2012 Jerry Pate National Intercollegiate as a sophomore at the University of Alabama and making the switch to a cross-handed in the middle of the tournament and winning his fifth career college title.

Now he has a lot more at stake.

“I remember 2020, going into the Travelers DJ (Dustin Johnson) was outside the playoffs, and he won the Travelers, won the FedEx Cup, won the Player of the Year with maybe five, six tournaments left,” Thomas said. “Not saying that, obviously, that's going to happen by any means. But it's possible.”

Thomas said it can be hard to maintain confidence while in a slump.

“It's amazing when you know your ball’s in the air sometimes and when things are going right, you're like, ‘oh, it's going to kick right and miss that bunker.’ When things aren't going right, you're like, ‘that thing’s going to kick right in that bunker,’ and it does. So, it's a dumb sport.”

Thomas knows the window is closing on his early-year goal of winning a major and playing on the Ryder Cup team. But at the same time, he’s focused on the here and now.

“I just have to go out and try to play the best I possibly can and try to win golf tournaments and get in contention and good stuff will happen,” he said.