Justin Thomas hopes he has found ‘the missing piece’ when it comes to his putting after an impressive performance on the greens has him in contention at the halfway stage of the Wells Fargo Championship.
Thomas has dealt with the large sloping greens at Quail Hollow well and ranks 21st in strokes gained putting heading into the weekend, a stark improvement on his season ranking of 152nd.
The two-time PGA Champion took an AimPoint lesson last week and he feels it eliminates the guessing game for him.
“I learned it last week or I guess had a lesson with it. It just, I felt like it was something that maybe it’s the missing piece, maybe it’s not. Like I said, I feel like I’ve been putting significantly better than the putting results have shown and a lot of it, at least I’ve noticed these last two days is it just takes a lot of the guessing out and simplifies it.
“Obviously you get some specific putts that are left edge or left center or a cup or whatever, but out here at a place like this you have a lot of big breaking putts and putts that require some feel to where I’m able to get an “ish” read kind of in a certain area. Then I’m able to use my feel and my kind of touch that I feel like I have to match the speed to that. It’s really just, it’s actually sped everything up for me, it’s sped my process up and simplified it. I’ve really liked it the last two days.”
Thomas has just two top-10s this season as he prepares for his PGA defence at Oak Hill in a fortnight. He might just be peaking at the right time with the AimPoint method giving him better trust with the putter so far this week.
“But a putt, left edge is left edge. I can’t create, you know what I’m saying, I can’t like create some kind of shot. I think sometimes I let that get in my head whereas I was just trying to simplify it. I do all the appropriate work in terms of my start line, my mechanics and I just need to basically have faith and trust in my ability that I’m choosing right. At the end of the day whether it’s AimPoint, whether it’s reading the greens, it’s a guess, it’s just your best guess and I need to have more faith that my guess is really good.”
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