Pros advice

What exactly were you expecting? Justin Thomas notched up his first win of the new season, his fifth of the calendar year and, with it, moved to third in the world.

He did it by beating Marc Leishman at the second extra hole after both players made spectacular birdies at the par-5 18th to edge out Cameron Smith by a shot.

Both parred the same hole at the first extra hole and then the Aussie hit a stinker of a fairway wood to let in Thomas who buttoned another approach to set up a tap-in, two-putt birdie. The bulk of Thomas’ scoring in Korea was done with an opening 63, there then followed rounds of 74-70-72 as the conditions stiffened up. On Sunday he even had a double-bogey seven at the 3rd before gathering himself. “I just kept telling myself it was a bad golf swing, it wasn’t a mental error or a wrong judgement that we made, it was just a bad golf swing at a pretty bad time,” Thomas said.

Talking Points

Let’s try and put Justin Thomas’ last 10 weeks into some sort of perspective. Coming into the PGA Championship he was 14th in the world having missed three straight cuts in June/July. He then won his first major, he then beat Jordan Spieth by three in the Dell Technologies Championship which was part of the FedEx play-offs; he was second behind Xander Schauffele at the Tour Championship which gave him the FedEx Cup, he went 3-1-1 in the Presidents Cup mauling (on debut), he won the Player of the Year and now he’s won already in the new season. “I’m so excited to not do anything,” he said after the play-off which seems fair enough.

Twirling his way to another win. pic.twitter.com/GY8JE1fcmu

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) October 22, 2017