There’s not an active golfer on Earth that Tiger Woods can’t one-up, and that includes Justin Thomas.
It seems, though, the former can’t ever learn his lesson in that regard.
Thomas is back at East Lake Golf Club where he and the PGA Tour’s other top 29 players from this season will play for the Tour Championship. At a pre-tournament press conference, JT was asked to recall his most vivid East Lake memory, and he went a little off the board with a story about Woods.
Tiger Woods One Ups Justin Thomas … Again
“Probably my best memory, and I couldn’t even tell you what year it was, it was probably — I guess it would have been 2020,” Thomas recalled in a session with reporters. “I remember playing here, playing a practice round and walking down 18 and FaceTiming Tiger and — because he wasn’t here and didn’t qualify, just showing him how the course was and how great it was.
“And then he acted like his phone cut out and then he called me back two minutes later with his green jacket on. I remember that very, very, very vividly.”
Talk about interesting timing. Woods, of course, won that green jacket at another little Georgia golf course, Augusta National Golf Club, when he won the 2019 Masters. The COVID-19 pandemic postponed the playing of the 2020 tournament until the fall, giving Woods a little extra time to celebrate his fifth Masters title.
Thomas, despite all of his accomplishments, has a relatively pedestrian record at Augusta, at least by his standards. He has “only” two top-10 finishes and has missed the cut two out of the last three years.
“Just a typical conversation (with Woods) of thinking I am having some kind of upper edge, and I get shut down and put in my place pretty quickly. There’s a lot of golf things here and there that have obviously happened, but that’s the first thing that came to mind when you said that.”
The New Side of Tiger Woods
Thomas and Woods are neighbors in pro golf-saturated Jupiter, Fla., and have become close friends. In recent years, Thomas — intentionally or not — has done a lot of good public relations for Woods by sharing these sorts of stories and interacting with the 15-time major winner in a way golf fans hadn’t seen very often over the last 30 years.
“I’ve seen a new side of him,” Thomas said in late 2024, per Golf.com. “I, mean, it’s just been really cool. He’s always checking in wanting to see how I’m doing, how Jill’s doing, how Molly’s doing. He knew when Jill’s surgery was, and he called the night before asking how everybody’s doing. I hung up and I just looked at Jill and she said ‘I bet you didn’t think that was going to happen when you were growing up.’ I’m like, ‘No, I didn’t.’”
As for Woods’ next act, that remains to be seen. A brutal run of injuries has simultaneously filled and sped up the twilight of his career as a competitive player. Woods missed the entire 2025 season with a ruptured Achilles.
It remains to be seen whether Woods will return in time for the start of Season 2 of TGL, the indoor golf league he and Rory McIlroy are backing.
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