Justin Thomas is currently preparing for The Open with one key club missing from his bag in unusual strategy

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Justin Thomas is currently preparing for another major championship as he takes on The Open Championship at Royal Portrush.

Thomas is a two-time major winner, with the American having won the PGA Championship in 2017 and 2022.

But he has never managed to finish inside the top 10 at The Open Championship, a statistic he will be looking to put right this week.

The tournament, which is the last major championship of the 2025 season, gets underway in Northern Ireland on Thursday.

And Thomas is among the star names to have been attempting to get to grips with Royal Portrush, with time now running out until the first round.

Justin Thomas prepares for The Open Championship without one key club

But the 16-time PGA Tour winner has taken a somewhat unusual approach ahead of the event, as shared by his fellow professional Michael Kim.

Kim has maintained his intriguing social media updates at Portrush, which have included sharing insight into Thomas’ bag from their front nine practice round.

READ MORE: Johnson Wagner names the player who he believes is the ‘favorite’ to win The Open Championship at Portrush

He wrote on X: “Not sure how committed JT is to his current plan but he didn’t have a driver in his bag today. Just the mini driver which he hits plenty far.”

How Tiger Woods won The Open in 2006 without a driver

No driver in the bag is a very interesting approach from Thomas, who may not be the only player to have done that in practice

The iconic course is set to challenge even the top drivers in world golf, including home favourite Rory McIlroy.

READ MORE: What initially really confused Tiger Woods about Royal Portrush the last time it hosted The Open back in 2019

And the expected challenging weather is only going to make the event at the dunes-filled venue more difficult.

Thomas would be following in the footsteps of a legendary figure if he were to continue his driverless strategy into the competition.

Tiger Woods clinched one of his three Open victories with that very strategy, triumphing at Royal Liverpool in 2006 by using his driver only once.

The remarkable approach raised many eyebrows but worked to perfection, with the American serving up a long and mid-iron masterclass.

The only use of his driver arrived on the par-five 16th in round one, where he missed the fairway but recovered to make birdie.

Speaking after his stunning display, Woods said: “As I was playing the golf course, I would hit a couple of drives, and the driver would go 350, 370 yards. How can you control that out here? You can’t control that.

“The fairways…they’re hard enough to hit as it is, and you add driver, and they go that far, now how hard is it to hit?

“So I just felt in the end if you stayed out of the bunkers this entire week and had just a decent week on the greens, I felt that I would be in contention on the back nine.

“Guys who were trying to hit the ball over the bunkers, they’re going to have shorter clubs on the greens, no doubt about that, but a lot of these flags you can’t attack with wedges.”