Justin Thomas, one of the top golfers in the world, had a first round to forget at The Open Championship on Thursday. The two-time major champion shot an 11-over-par 82, the worst round of his major career, and finished in a tie for 154th in the 156-man field.
Thomas’s troubles started on the first hole, where he chunked a chip into a sand trap and made a bogey. He never recovered from that shaky start, and dropped six more shots along the way. But the worst was yet to come on the par-five 18th hole, where he had a nightmare sequence that resulted in a quadruple bogey.
Thomas hit his tee shot out of bounds, and then found a greenside bunker with his fourth shot. From an awkward lie, he could only move his ball into another bunker, and then had to play out backwards into the rough. He finally reached the green with his seventh shot, and two-putted from 12 feet for a nine.
Thomas admitted after his round that he was “humiliated and embarrassed” by his performance, and that he had difficulty finding his form of late. He has missed the cut in three of his previous four starts, and is unlikely to make it to the weekend at Royal Liverpool.
Thomas will need a miraculous turnaround on Friday to have any chance of salvaging his tournament, but he will also need some help from the weather and the leaderboard. He is currently 18 shots behind the leader Louis Oosthuizen, who shot a flawless six-under-par 65.
