Justin Thomas Wins the P.G.A. Championship With a Roaring Comeback

TULSA, Okla. — The dominant story line earlier than the 2022 P.G.A. Championship revolved round Phil Mickelson, who turned the oldest major champion last year when he received the occasion at age 50 however selected to not defend his title. Then the focus of the match shifted to Tiger Woods, 46, who arrived at the Southern Hills Country Club to renew his stirring comeback from accidents he sustained in a horrific automotive crash 15 months in the past. But Woods struggled bodily, and mired in final place after three rounds, he withdrew earlier than Sunday’s ultimate spherical.

What advanced as a substitute on the final day of the P.G.A. Championship was a glimpse of elite males’s golf’s youthful future, not its growing old previous. On a nervy, topsy-turvy afternoon in jap Oklahoma, there was yet one more dramatic showdown between the dazzling, hard-swinging 20-somethings who’ve overtaken the sport.

In a taut, three-hole mixture playoff after the 18-hole fourth spherical resulted in a tie, Justin Thomas, 29, held off the 25-year-old rising star Will Zalatoris to win his second P.G.A. Championship. The final 4 winners of golf’s main championships, Thomas; Scottie Scheffler, at the Masters; Collin Morikawa, at the British Open; and Jon Rahm, the reigning U.S. Open champion, are of their 20s.

Even in defeat, Zalatoris briefly laughed as he assessed how his technology had turn into dominant so shortly.

“I kind of have to check myself sometimes because I feel like I’m playing junior golf and college golf all over again,” Zalatoris stated, mentioning his longtime rivals Scheffler, Thomas and Mito Pereira, 27, who held the lead for many of the fourth spherical. “We’ve been playing together for almost 10 years. Now we’re at the highest level of golf.”

Thomas, who started the ultimate spherical seven strokes off the lead, didn’t determine to be celebrating a victory after his first eight holes Sunday when he was one over par. His final-round rally tied for the third-largest comeback in main championship historical past.

“It was a bizarre day, no doubt,” Thomas, who additionally received the 2017 P.G.A. Championship, stated. “But I said in a news conference before the first round that no lead would be safe here — too much wind and too many scary holes.”

Pereira, the third-round chief, had appeared poised to turn into the first golfer from Chile to win a main golf championship. Stepping to the 18th tee Sunday night, he was taking part in in the ultimate group and wanted solely a par to clinch the title.

But Pereira, taking part in in simply his second main championship, sliced his tee shot into a small creek adjoining to the fairway. After a penalty shot drop from the water, Pereira’s method shot discovered the thick tough alongside the inexperienced. His chip from there trundled far throughout the inexperienced till it stopped in the fringe on the reverse facet of the inexperienced. Pereira made double bogey, and completed in a tie for third place with the American Cameron Young, a school teammate of Zalatoris’s once they had been at Wake Forest.

“It’s such a stressful situation,” Pereira stated of the environment on the 18th tee. “But I didn’t feel any more nervous than other shots today. I wasn’t even thinking of the water. But, you know, I wish I could do it again.”

The playoff ended a streak of 19 consecutive majors, courting to the 2017 Masters, that didn’t require further holes to determine the final result.

Thomas and Zalatoris started the playoff with birdies on the first gap, the thirteenth. On the reachable par-4, 302-yard seventeenth gap, Thomas drove the inexperienced and had a prolonged putt for eagle that got here up 3 ft brief. Zalatoris’s drive on the seventeenth gap was simply off the inexperienced, and his flop shot stopped 8 ft from the gap. His birdie putt skidded previous the gap, and Zalatoris tapped in for par.

With the likelihood to grab the benefit, Thomas rattled in his birdie putt for a one-stroke edge heading into the third playoff gap, the 18th.

Both golfers reached the 18th inexperienced in two pictures. Zalatoris couldn’t convert a birdie putt, and Thomas wanted solely two putts for a par that clinched the championship.

For Zalatoris, it was his newest shut name in a main. He completed second ultimately yr’s Masters and was tied for sixth at that occasion final month. He was tied for eighth at the 2021 P.G.A. Championship and tied for sixth at the 2020 U.S. Open.

But on Sunday, Zalatoris, after an even-par entrance 9, was hampered by poor placing, which has plagued him all season. He bogeyed the twelfth and sixteenth holes however rallied by draining an 8-foot birdie putt on the seventeenth gap. He additionally sank a 10-foot putt to save lots of par at the ultimate gap to shoot 71 for the ultimate spherical and end at 5 beneath par general. At the time, although, it didn’t seem like sufficient to catch Pereira.

Thomas almost certainly completed his spherical with the identical feeling. After his tough begin to the day, he birdied the ninth gap and had a par at the tenth. Thomas then sank a 64-foot putt from simply off the eleventh gap for one more birdie. At the par-4 twelfth, he sank an 18-foot birdie putt. Thomas missed consecutive manageable birdie putts at the thirteenth and 14th holes, however then splashed a shot from a greenside bunker at the par-4 seventeenth gap to inside 3 ft, a distance he efficiently negotiated for his fifth birdie of the day. That would put him inside one stroke of Pereira with one gap to play. A superb drive and brave method shot to the elevated 18th inexperienced stopped 11 ft behind the gap, however Thomas’s putt slid previous the proper edge for a par and a rating of 67.

“I was very calm in the playoff and very calm in the final holes before the playoff, which helped a lot,” Thomas stated. “I was nervous, but it was a different kind of nervous, which maybe comes with experience. It was different than how I felt trying to win my first major in 2017. Whatever it was, it felt right.

“To execute some of those tough shots when you really need to, it was full body chills.”