Under the Radar Pick for the U.S. Open? Justin Thomas—Here's Why

Every time a major championship rolls around, there’s a big name that comes in under the radar that I have to talk myself out of picking. This time, I tried my best to do just that. But I couldn’t. I love Justin Thomas at the U.S. Open this week—now that I’ve said it out loud he’ll probably miss the cut, but we ride anyway.

JT’s play of late has been a little bit of a mixed bag. Since winning the RBC Heritage, he’s tied for second at the Truist Championship, missed the cut at the PGA Championship, and tied for 37th at the Memorial.

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But let’s dig a little deeper.

At Quail Hollow, JT got off to an awful start. He doubled his second hole of the championship and was quickly 4-over through his first six holes. But from that point on, he was 1-under. Still, it wasn’t good enough to make it to the weekend. At the same time, I don’t think anyone should overthink that MC.

Thomas' driver let him down at Jack’s Place, as he hit just over 50 percent of fairways. Again, not great. But the performance of that club seems to dictate his results.

With that in mind, I spent a little time at the range Wednesday afternoon standing behind JT watching him smash away at the big stick. The little cut he had going on was on repeat. Every shot was coming out of the same window, and the ball just fell to the right. A beautiful thing. Now, am I putting too much into a single range session? For sure, but the point stands.

But the big question is this: does his game fit Oakmont?

This is a big ballpark, and it demands perfection off the tee. JT will have to carry over that range session performance to the golf course, which we all know can be difficult to do. But one thing caught my eye once I sat back down in the media center.

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I took a gander at Data Golf and its Course Fit tool, which if you’ve never used it before, is a resource that shows which courses play similarly to each other—so, aptly named, in my opinion. You’ll never guess which course came in at No. 1 in regards to Oakmont.

Southern Hills Country Club.

Sound familiar? Well, that’s because JT won the PGA Championship there in 2022.

Plus, it’s hard to ignore his value. On DraftKings, you can get 40/1 odds on Mr. Thomas. I’d call that pretty damn good for a player of Thomas’ level.

We’ll get a good sense of whether or not this take is hot or ice cold pretty quickly come Thursday afternoon—JT tees off No. 1 at 1:04 p.m. ET alongside Min Woo Lee and Brooks Koepka. If his driver behaves, I’ll start getting emotionally invested.

Let’s ride, JT—please make me look good.

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