Justin Thomas set to play 'a little pissed off this year' after Presidents Cup snub

KAPALUA, Hawaii – Justin Thomas enters the new golf season with a chip on his shoulder. And he can thank U.S. Presidents Cup Captain Jim Furyk for it.

“I haven't had the opportunity to play pissed off for a while, so I'm pretty excited to play a little pissed off this year,” Thomas said on Wednesday ahead of the opening round of the Sentry, the kickoff to the 2025 PGA Tour season at Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course.

Thomas wasn’t selected by Furyk for the U.S. Presidents Cup team that retained the trophy in the biennial competition in September.

“I didn't deserve to be on the team,” Thomas conceded, “but mentally inside my mind I always think and know that I'm going to be a good addition to a team. So, sometimes you have to tell yourself some things. But like I said, I just, I'm excited to— and I love Jim, we talked many times, and our friendship and relationship hasn't changed at all — but there would be nothing more I would love than about four, five six times this year to text him and say, ‘Good call.’”

Thomas has sweated out being a captain’s pick the last two years. Zach Johnson gave him the nod for the 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup team that lost in Rome, but this time Thomas got the bad news while on a trip with his wife, Jill.

“I felt bad for her because it was in the morning,” Thomas recalled. “Kind of ruined that day. Pretty sure I ordered a beer at lunch. I needed that one.”

Thomas noted that he didn’t do a very good job of concealing his disappointment from his wife.

“If I was home, I would have gone straight to the range,” Thomas said. “I'm going to prove why I don't think that that was a good decision. Like I said, it was the right decision, but some things you just have to kind of tell yourself.”

Thomas is motivated to make sure he secures one of six automatic spots on this fall’s U.S. team so that he doesn’t have to rely on U.S. captain Keegan Bradley to spend one of his six picks on him. “It is not a fun place to be in,” Thomas said of needing a captain’s pick. “Not only waiting for the phone call, but then not knowing how the phone call is going to go, so it's a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress.”

Thomas finished T-14 in the 2024 FedEx Cup after an off year by his standards and is returning to Kapalua after a one-year absence. His record at the Plantation Course is impressive, including victories in 2017 and 2020 and two third-place finishes in 2019 and 2021. The 15-time Tour winner recorded six top-10s in the 2024 season, highlighted by a runner-up at the Zozo Championship in October and a T-3 at the Hero World Challenge in December but hasn’t tasted victory since the 2022 PGA Championship.

Still, he enters the new year full of confidence that as he approaches age 32, his best golf could still be in front of him.

“Talent doesn't leave your body, it doesn't just go away,” he said. “I still fully believe that I can have a year like Scottie just had. I mean, there's no reason – I think I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn't think I could at least do that. I mean, I have a lot of faith and capability in my game, and I feel like I'm working on the right things, but it doesn't just happen because you think you can and because you think you deserve it, you have to work harder than everybody else, and you have to do the right things.”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Justin-thomas-sentry-play-a-little-pissed-off