102nd PGA Championship: Top 10 power rankings at TPC Harding Park

Justin Thomas already has one PGA Championship and is primed to win another.

The 2017 PGA Champion at Valhalla comes to the 2020 edition at TPC Harding Park as the PGA Tour’s lone three-time winner in the 2019-2020 season.

One of those trophies was earned last week at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. Thomas quickly erased a four-shot deficit entering Sunday in Memphis to take the lead early in the back nine. He held it much of the way down the stretch to hold off a crowded leaderboard that featured Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Daniel Berger.

Even with some errant drives in the closing holes and a shaky putter throughout the week, Thomas proved his talent by shot-making all over the course and around the greens. He finished second in the field in strokes gained approach (7.67 total) and fourth in SG around the green (3.126).

Prior to Sunday, JT was the best player on Tour without a win since the PGA Tour resumed June 11.

He finished T-10th at the Charles Schwab Challenge, T-8th at the RBC Heritage and lost in a hard-fought playoff to fellow hot hand Collin Morikawa at the Workday Charity Open.

“This is the time of year where it’s obviously nice to get on a little bit of a run, but although there’s a lot of parts of my game that were really good this week and today, there are still parts that definitely need work,” Thomas was quoted by TeeScripts. “That’s what’s exciting, that I felt like I could win by three with extremely poor wedge play throughout the week. And I didn’t really hit anything too close, it just kind of — I was managing my game really well.”

JT has made 13 of 17 cuts at the majors and three of four at the PGA. He only has two other top-10s to go with his win, but does have five more top-25s and a couple top-40s.

Harding Park calls for shot-shaping and curving the ball, which JT can do. He’s got all the shots to take on this course for the first time.

Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay was on the bag last week and will stay there for the PGA Championship. JT’s regular caddie, Jimmy Johnson, has been out since the third round of memorial due to spells of dizziness. Mackay will have knowledge of TPC Harding Park from caddying with Phil at WGCs and the Presidents Cup.