Justin Thomas not feeling extra pressure with PGA Championship in hometown

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Justin Thomas stood in tears as Louisville city officials honored him last week with their “Hometown Hero” award, unfurling a 60-foot banner from a building he used to pass on the way to Saint Xavier High School as a kid.

“The things I’ve felt today,’’ Thomas told the assembled crowd after needing several moments to compose himself, “I’ve never felt in any golf tournament I’ve won.”

Thomas has won 15 times on the PGA Tour, and two of those wins were PGA Championships — in 2015 at Quail Hollow and 2022 at Southern Hills , his last victory.

This week’s PGA Championship will be a completely different animal for Thomas, because it’s taking place at Valhalla, which sits just a few miles down the road from where he grew up and played his golf as a youth under the watchful eyes of his dad and coach, Mike, who was the head pro at nearby Harmony Landing.

Few players in the game put more pressure on themselves to perform — and wear it on their sleeve — than Thomas.

That makes this week a particularly heavy challenge for him, because he burns so badly to perform well in his hometown major championship.

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“Well, the good news is I have a pretty easy time putting a lot of pressure on myself already, so that shouldn’t be too much of an adjustment,’’ Thomas said Tuesday, tongue firmly planted in cheek. “I’m not really sure exactly how I’m going to feel. I’ve never experienced it. I’ve never played a professional tournament, let alone a PGA, in my hometown, so I’m sure it will be some new feelings, some good feelings.

“[I’m] just going to take it in and try to use it to my advantage, use the energy, the support to try to kind of get me going and push me along as the week goes.’’

Thomas was a 7-year-old riding his dad’s coattails with freebie tickets when Tiger Woods won the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla in a playoff over Bob May.

Woods’ remarkable performance that week had a profound effect on Thomas.

“This tournament at this golf course is a lot of reason I feel like my love for professional golf and wanting to win majors and golf tournaments,’’ Thomas said. “[It] came from watching Tiger here in 2000 in person. Not that you know what you want to do when you’re 7 years old, but I had a pretty good idea that I wanted to play golf.’’

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So, here he is: Not only one of the best players in the world, ranked No. 31 and winner of more than $52 million in prize money, but one of Woods’ best friends .

Now comes the pressure of performing as a hometown hero.

“It will be a new experience for me,” Thomas said.

Thomas said he’s sought out advice on the rare dynamic, speaking to Keegan Bradley, a New England native, about what it was like to play the 2022 U.S. Open at Brookline outside of Boston, where he was in contention on the weekend.

“I told him what I tried to do is look into the crowd and make eye contact with people and see how excited they were and try to feed off that,” Bradley said. “My motto for the week was, ‘Why look forward to something for so long and not enjoy it?’ ’’

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Tommy Fleetwood experienced the magic of it in 2017 when he played the British Open at Royal Birkdale, which is right next to Southport in England, where he grew up.

Fleetwood struggled early with an opening-round 76 and rallied to finish 27th.

“There’s pressure from yourself, because it means that much more [and] then there’s pressure of playing before your home crowd,’’ Fleetwood said. “[But] it’s so rare you get to do things like that, [so] if you don’t embrace it, you’ll look back and wish that you did.”

Rory McIlroy played just miles up the road from his hometown of Holywood in Northern Ireland in the 2019 British Open at Royal Portrush and began the tournament with a quadruple-bogey 8 on the first hole en route to a 79 and a missed cut.

“I remember getting onto the first tee Thursday and feeling overwhelmed, like I hadn’t really prepared for it or visualized it or took my mind to a place where I was expecting to feel what I felt,” McIlroy recalled recently. “I don’t know that you can. You can’t prepare for it until you actually feel it.”

To be sure, Thomas will be feeling it on the first tee Thursday.

“I know if there’s one tournament this year left that he would want to win, it would be this one here,’’ Jordan Spieth, one of Thomas’ close friends, said. “And it would be something that would be one of the coolest moments of his life … maybe forever.’’

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