Thomas mental capacity admission after PGA Tour | Golf News

Justin Thomas endured a chastening return to PGA Tour motion at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, ending spherical one tied for last place, and he admitted he didn’t have the “mental capacity” to attempt to sharpen up on the vary.

The two-time major champion carded a seven-over-par 79 at Bay Hill in his first spherical after having back surgical procedure in November. Thomas had not performed since the Ryder Cup two months prior, having grown drained of nagging hip pain that dogged him throughout the season.

But it was no laughing matter when Thomas teed it up in Florida on Thursday, exhibiting a lot of rust after his extended absence.

The 32-year-old discovered himself two-over-par at the flip, and made two double bogeys on a back 9 of 41 to end the day at the underside of the leaderboard alongside Pierson Coody and Aldrich Potgeiter.

Thomas trails first-round chief Daniel Berger by a whopping 16 pictures, and when requested if he supposed to put in some laborious yards on the vary on Thursday night, Thomas said he didn’t have it in him.

“I’ll go hit a couple putts,” Thomas said. “I probably would maybe go hit a couple balls, but I just really don’t have the mental capacity to go do that much.

“So just go do literally a couple minutes of stuff and, yeah, physio and go home and try to go to sleep and do it again tomorrow.”

Thomas had a brutal day with the putter, dropping nearly 4 strokes to the sphere, and he admitted he was not in the best headspace on the back 9.

“I putted terrible today,” he said. “I had a hard time gauging the speed. But just a lot of little stuff. I could not keep my concentration for the life of me on the back nine.

“I just had a couple times I had to back off because I just would kind of walk into the shot and have no idea what I was even trying to do.

“It was good to play, honestly, an 18-hole pro-am yesterday for me to get used to being out here that long and trying to concentrate that long. I haven’t done that in a while. But still no excuse to make that many mistakes. But just go out and try to do better tomorrow.”