Justin Thomas makes his long-awaited return to the game this week at the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational after missing about 4 months due to back surgery. There was a lot of buzz around Thomas for this tournament, and despite being a fan favourite, the golfer had a dreadful campaign. He fired two consecutive rounds of 7 over par to miss the cut by a large margin.
Interestingly, after failing to make it to the weekend game, Justin Thomas blamed it on the Bay Hill Club’s dead greens. The golfer explained that he was participating in the tournament to practice for the Players Championship rather than play on such a dead green golf course, which will only worsen as the game progresses. According to an X post by NUCLR Golf, Thomas claimed:
“I’d come out here to practice, but it doesn’t really make sense to putt on these greens… I mean, there’s zero chance that they’re going to be alive Sunday. They are so dead already, so that is one good thing about not playing here this weekend, because it is going to suck. It’s going to be really hard.”
In the comments section of this post, Fans began to heavily criticize Justin Thomas, comparing him to World No. 2 Rory McIlroy and stating the two have the same degree of complaining. The fans even said that the PGA Tour only had B-tier golfers because LIV has signed the best ones. Some fans even said that Thomas’s attitude was the reason they didn’t miss him.
Talking more about the comments, here’s a look at a few of them:
“This is Rory McIlroy level whining lol.” One fan stated.
“PGA tour full of betas.. LIV took most of the alphas,” another fan pointed out.
“To be honest …I didn’t miss this lil quirky dork when he was away.” One fan exclaimed
“Nice to see back surgery didn’t fix his shitty attitude and unlikeableness,” another fan stated.
“Daniel Berger doesn’t seem to be having any issues.” Another fan took a shot.
Aside from that, Thomas recently discussed his time at home and how he is unable to sit around.
Justin Thomas claims he needs a job after retiring from golf
On March 4, Justin Thomas addressed the media from his comeback to the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational, discussing the surgery and his time away from the golf field. There, he explained how he realized in his spare time that he is not someone who can sit about and that whenever he retires from the game, he must find work for himself. According to Asap Sports, Thomas said,
“That I’m going to need a job when I retire. I definitely am not good at doing nothing. Yeah, I’m going to need to find something whenever I stop playing golf, because when you have nothing to look forward to or nothing to feel like you can improve and get better for, when you’re kind of wired that way, it’s a hard thing to step right into. So I would say that.”
Justin Thomas’s next campaign will be The Players Championship, which takes place next week at TPC Sawgrass.
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