The new year and the new season are finally here! With this, Justin Thomas aspires to replicate a year as spectacular as the one Scottie Scheffler just had. Well, who wouldn’t want a year filled with triumphs? Scottie Scheffler had one of the greatest seasons last year, which he capped off his season at the Hero World Challenge, becoming the third-ever player to defend his title. With such an impressive list of achievements, it’s no wonder that professionals like Justin Thomas dream of having a year like Scheffler’s.

And we speak with evidence here. On January 2nd, Thomas candidly declared, “I understand it’s not realistic in the percentages and the likeliness of it, it’s probably not, but I still fully believe that I can have a year like Scottie just had…” We truly appreciate his honesty in acknowledging that “it’s not realistic.” However, the golf world showed no mercy for this comment.  Now, at Sentry, he is facing backlash for other reasons too, and that is, not working with his dad.

You see, JT, and Mike Thomas were the duo fans loved. But before the 2023 Ryder Cup, news came that the golfer had fired his dad as his coach. When the rumors went viral, Mike Thomas could only laugh about it. He said, “You’re kidding. That’s just stupid. That’s what some people in the media do. It’s ridiculous.”

Now, JT is working without a swing coach. His thoughts on it? He thinks it’s better for him. “I’ve always been so good at fixing things on the course and on the run and trying stuff and I just lost that. So I think getting back to that where I have the accountability and ownership to, like, if I’m not hitting it good, I need to be able to figure this out on my own. I don’t have somebody to hold my hand and kind of tell me what it is. So it’s just been better for me. It’s more like what I normally, what I used to be, in a sense of, like, Okay, I’m just going to keep going, keep in check, and if I need something then we’ll go from there,” said Thomas at Kapalua. But does everyone think that this is good for JT? Certainly not the former coach of Tiger Woods, Hank Haney.

He suggested that Justin Thomas has not lived up to expectations in his putting performance, despite the support of his father, Mike Thomas, who boasts a solid track record in guiding him. “The on your own success list is very short, Justin’s dad Mike Thomas had a very good track record helping his son, he’s a good fall back if Justin needs help, at the end of the day when your expectations are to be a top 5 player but your putting stats are some of the worst on tour it’s a tough fit,” wrote Haney on X.

JT has always thought that he fixes things on his own, the best. In 2023, he clarified his father’s role in his team, saying, “My dad came out a handful of times a year, more so because he was working. But he can come out any and all as he wants as a dad, but there’s just going to be some weeks where if things are good, I don’t necessarily need a coach, and I think that’s more of just where I want things.”

As Haney’s harsh criticism comes to light, do you think it’s right?

Why was Haney not wrong about Thomas?

The connection between Justin Thomas and poor putting is hardly new. One of the most significant examples came during the 2020-2021 season, where the 31-year-old ranked 123rd in Strokes Gained – Putting.

In 2023, his putting stats continued to falter, as he lost more than two strokes per tournament on the greens. At the third round of the Valspar Championship, he lost 7.034 strokes putting, by far the worst putting round of his career. He made a 2’9″ putt on the first hole and didn’t make anything longer than that for the rest of the day.

While his overall strokes gained metrics look healthy, his putting stands out as a glaring outlier. Thomas ranks inside the top 10 in four out of six measured metrics. He is Tour average in the fifth (SG: Off the Tee), but when it comes to putting, the 28-year-old finds himself outside the top 100.

“I never had so many putts, like especially at the Open Championship and had some again here, where I feel like I’m hitting good putts, feel like it’s good speed and they’re just lipping out instead of lipping in,” Thomas said. “You get on those runs sometimes and it sucks so bad when it’s doing that.”

In the competitive world of golf, these struggles are all too real, and as the new season unfolds, it will be fascinating to see how Thomas addresses these challenges.