I write this piece with some hesitation, because after the American debacle that was the Rome Ryder Cup, the topic of “should Justin Thomas have made the team?” feels almost soul-killing. It’s a narrative that has seemed to persist for an entire year (given new life by the “Full Swing” documentary on Netflix), and now here we are again, with a new event but the same old question. This time, the situation is reversed—Thomas has been left off the Presidents Cup team by captain Jim Furyk, while he was a controversial inclusion in Italy—but the rhythms feel depressingly familiar.
There’s also the fact that the Thomas storyline in Rome somehow became drawn along PGA Tour vs. LIV battle lines, even though it never made sense, seeing as how his chief rivals for a spot on the team were also PGA Tour players. I was on Thomas’ side last year, for reasons I’ll get into, but as much fun as it was to be called a Tour shill for that opinion, I’m not exactly eager to repeat the process.
Still, what’s right is right: Thomas is, quite simply, the greatest team match-play golfer of his generation. His career record across Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup competitions is an astonishing 17-7-4, it was even better before Rome, and the fact that he started to show a hint of form at season’s end last year was plenty of justification to take him. It’s the same reason Europe would always take Ian Poulter in his prime regardless of how he was playing in August. Some guys are just really, really good at this stuff, and Thomas is one of them. In outlying cases like these, success predicts success, and positive experience matters so much more than a few missed cuts.
Thomas’ results in Paris were mediocre in a wider disaster for the Americans—he went 1-2-1, though we should note he was paired with the woeful Jordan Spieth in his first three matches—but to have any integrity in these discussions, you have to analyze the question on whether it was the correct call at the time, and I still think it was. Now, did Zach Johnson make it look egregiously bad and (generously) crony-adjacent on “Full Swing”? Oh yeah! I still believe it was the correct decision in a vacuum, but Johnson’s approach was cringe-inducing, and I can’t help but wonder if it influenced Furyk.
This year, nothing has changed about Thomas’ superlative history in team match play. The only thing that’s different in 2024 is that he’s better. It wasn’t the best year of his life, but he rounded into decent form at the end, made the Tour Championship and finished seventh there. Since the RBC Heritage this spring, he has four top-10s and only one missed cut. It’s a far cry from the doldrums of the summer of 2023, and it should be more than enough. You don’t even have to get into the question of who he might have replaced—personally, I think there’s a great argument for Max Homa, even despite his ragged recent form—but one way or another, he deserved to make the team.
So why didn’t he? When Furyk was asked out it in his press conference on Tuesday, the first response was a non-answer: “There are a bunch of guys that I would want on this team. It was a difficult decision with JT. Definitely a difficult call to make. But as a captain, you’re trying to make the best decision, put the best 12 guys together, fit the puzzle pieces together, the pairings together. It’s tough. He’s got a great record in these events. But ultimately that was the decision that was made.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Furyk for that answer. Evasiveness is absolutely his prerogative, and some captains don’t want to give away the secret sauce. So I asked the follow-up about optics—did the negative vibes around the JT-Keegan Rome storyline influence anything this time around?
“No, I didn’t make picks off of popularity,” he said. “I didn’t make picks off of how it would be perceived in the media because ultimately it matters what the 12 guys inside feel, and definitely JT would be a great addition to this team, there’s no doubt about it. He’s got a great record. He’s an emotional guy, a feisty guy, a leader. He definitely would have been a good pick. But it has nothing to do with optics.”
Which is all well and good, but we still don’t know why he was left off. And considering Furyk’s reluctance to name a concrete reason, we probably never will.
At the Presidents Cup in Melbourne in 2019, a nightmarish early U.S. performance under what felt like an apathetic Tiger Woods captaincy threatened to tank the entire team. Over the first three sessions of 14 matches, the U.S. only won four full points. Three of those full points belonged to Thomas, who almost single handedly kept the Americans just close enough to stage a big comeback in singles and avoid losing their first Presidents Cup in 20 years.
That’s the kind of thing Thomas does. He won four matches again in Quail Hollow in 2022. At the Paris Ryder Cup, with his team crumbling around him, he somehow won four matches, including a singles win over Rory McIlroy in the No. 1 spot to give his team a breath of hope. At Whistling Straits, Thomas won won 2½ more points in the American blowout. Almost every time you need him, he’s there. Again, he’s the American Poulter.
I would still be very curious to hear Furyk’s reasoning, and it’s a shame we didn’t get at least a hint on Tuesday, because it forces all of us outside the circle to try to guess why he was excluded. Try as I might, I can’t come up with a good reason … there’s just no justification for leaving the greatest American team match-play golfer on the bench. He’s been a hero in the past, and he’s young enough at 31 that he’s going to be a critical part of the future. So why are we erasing his name in the present?
Main Image: Jared C Tilton
