A preternatural internal drive that all the money in the sport cannot satiate is one of the very few innately-acquired necessary skills required to maintain the level of golf which Thomas desires. A few years ago, I ran into someone who had spent time with J.T. on a Friday night after he missed the cut at The Players. He was irate in a way that is unusual for top-10-type players in the world. Probably because he knew that at TPC Sawgrass, as he proved this weekend, a narrowly-made cut can lead to an insane last 36 holes. It’s that obsession with being great that informs the trajectory of his career, and looking at the trajectory of his career serves two purposes. The first is to show that, though he is not currently, he will at some point almost certainly surpass Jordan Spieth as the most-accomplished player of his generation (unless Bryson DeChambeau does first). And the second is to show what could be with J.T.
