19th Hole
The ‘harsh’ words Tiger gave Justin Thomas that made him a better player
Honesty may always be the best policy, even when a very progressive youngster asks a true great for advice.
Readying himself to play alongside his father at this week’s PNC Championship, Justin Thomas, the current world number 6, recalled a series of past events that may have given him a further boost to his burgeoning career circa 2017/18.
Following a season that saw JT go back-to-back in Hawaii, land his first major (PGA) and follow up with wins at the Dell Tech and CJ Cup, the then 24-year-old found himself paired with his lifetime hero at the Hero Challenge. However, whilst that was the first time they played together, it was after the 2018 Genesis that he remembers asking the question.
Speaking at this week’s PNC Championship, JT recalled how the conversation went down: “I’m like, ‘Hey, we played a lot at home, but now we played in a tournament,’” Thomas remembers. “What do you see in what do I need to get better at?”
“Immediately he’s like, ‘You don’t have near enough shots. Like, you can work it but you don’t have enough shots to be, you know, as dominant as I was.’ That kind of thing. He’s like, ‘You have some that you can hit, but you don’t have all of them and you don’t have enough.’”
Honesty, but perhaps what JT needed to hear, if not particularly what he wanted. Indeed, despite not changing his entire game, he went on to win his very next tournament at the Honda and significantly his first at Firestone, at a course and event Tiger has won a record eight times.
“It’s a 9-iron, 160 yards to a middle pin, like, I’m going to hit a 9-iron. I’m not going to feel like I need to hook it or hit a big slice,” he said. “But at the end of the day, there’s definitely a lot of shots throughout the year that I’m able to use that to help me. Or there’s pins that I can maybe get close to that the person I’m playing with can’t. So it’s helped.”
Tiger isn’t one of those that sees one shot and wants to repeat it. I guess golf viewers have seen much of that in evidence over the years and in the 15 major wins and there certainly won’t be many better-qualified advisors in the game.
Often called JT’s big brother, Woods now has his own son, Charlie, playing alongside him this week and looking up to the very man that his father advised in 2018.
With the two families extremely close, Charlie will not lack in candidates for his own mentor, but none with better qualifications than his own ‘big brother’.
Certainly not finished at the top yet, Thomas has learnt from that fateful day and is prepared to pass on his own advice.
“I see it in a lot of rookies or even players that have been out here that are kind of like, on that edge,” Thomas said. “It’s very, very similar to a lot of stuff that I see, and I can see why he saw it in me now.”
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19th Hole
‘Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight’ – LPGA pro offers candid take following rough AIG Women’s Open finish
An opening round of 77 left LPGA pro Jenny Shin with a mountain to climb at last week’s AIG Women’s Open.
However, fighting back with rounds of 69 and 67, Shin found herself six shots off the lead and just outside the top 10 heading into Sunday as she went in search of her first major victory.
Shin, who won the US Girls’ Junior at just 13, couldn’t back those rounds up on Sunday, though, and after playing her opening nine holes of the final round in level par, she then bogeyed three holes coming home to slip down the leaderboard and eventually finish T23.
Taking to X following the final round, Shin offered a frustrated and honest take on how she was feeling, posting: “Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish.”
Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish
— Jenny Shin (@JennyShin_LPGA) August 3, 2025
Shin has made 11 cuts in 13 starts on the LPGA Tour this season, but has been plagued by frustrating Sunday finishes throughout the year. Shin ranks 102nd on tour this year out of 155 for Round 4 scoring in 2025.
Miyu Yamashita won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open with a composed final round of 70 to win her first major of her career by two strokes.
Cameron Young won the Wyndham Championship on Sunday for his first victory on the PGA Tour.
Young dominated all weekend at TPC Sedgefield, running away from the pack to win by six strokes and put himself in contention for a Ryder Cup pick in September.
Ahead of the event, the 28-year-old switched to a Pro V1x prototype golf ball for the first time, following recent testing sessions with the Titleist Golf Ball R&D team.
Interestingly, Young played a practice round accompanied by Fordie Pitts, Titleist’s Director of Tour Research & Validation, at TPC Schedule early last week with both his usual Pro V1 Left Dot ball and the new Pro V1x prototype.
Per Titleist, by the second hole Young was exclusively hitting shots with the Pro V1x prototype.
“We weren’t sure if he was going to test it this week, but as he was warming up, he asked to hit a couple on the range,” Pitts said. “He was then curious to see some shots out on the course. Performance-wise, he was hitting tight draws everywhere. His misses were staying more in play. He hit some, what he would call ‘11 o’clock shots,’ where again he’s taking a little something off it. He had great control there.”
According to Titleist, the main validation came on Tuesday on the seventh hole of his practice round. The par 3 that played between 184 and 225 yards during the tournament called for a 5-iron from Young, or so he thought. Believing there was “no way” he could get a 6-iron to the flag with his Left Dot, Young struck a 5-iron with the Pro V1x prototype and was stunned to see the ball land right by the hole.
“He then hits this 6-iron [with the Pro V1x prototype] absolutely dead at the flag, and it lands right next to the pin, ending up just past it,” Pitts said. “And his response was, ‘remarkable.’ He couldn’t believe that he got that club there.”
Following nine holes on Tuesday and a further nine on Wednesday, Young asked the Titleist team to put the ProV1x balls in his locker. The rest, as they say, is history.
Rickie Fowler fired an opening round of one-under par on Thursday at the Wyndham Championship, as the Californian looks to make a FedEx Cup playoff push.
Fowler is currently 61st in the standings, so will need a strong couple of weeks to extend his season until the BMW Championship, where only the top 50 in the standings will tee it up.
Heading into the final stretch of the season, Fowler has made an equipment switch of note, changing into new iron shafts, as well as making a switch to his driver shaft.
The 36-year-old revealed this week that he has switched from his usual KBS Tour C-Taper 125-gram steel shafts to the graphite Aerotech SteelFiber 125cw shafts in his Cobra King Tour irons, a change he first put into play at last month’s Travelers Championship.
Speaking on the change to reporters this week, Fowler made note that the graphite shafts offer “something that’s a little easier on the body.”
“I mean, went to the week of Travelers, so been in for, I guess that’s a little over a month now. Something that’s a little easier on the body and seemed to get very similar numbers to where I was at. Yeah, it’s gone well so far.”
Fowler has also made a driver shaft change, switching out his Mitsubishi Diamana WB 73 TX for a UST Mamiya Lin-Q Proto V1 6 TX driver shaft in his Cobra DS-Adapt X, which he first implemented a couple of weeks ago at the John Deere Classic.
However, according to Fowler himself, the testing and potential changes are not done yet.
“Probably do some more testing in some different weight configurations with them once I get some time. Yeah, I feel like we’re always trying to search, one, to get better but are there ways to make things easier, whether that’s physically, mentally, whatever it may be. So yeah, I thought they were good enough to obviously put into play and looking forward to doing some more testing.”
Fowler gets his second round at TPC Sedgefield underway at 7.23 a.m ET on Friday.
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