What Justin Thomas was doing ‘all week long’ at the RBC Heritage which Rick Gehman says he’s never seen him do before

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When you look at Justin Thomas’ statistics on the PGA Tour during the 2024 season, there is one glaring weakness which helps explain why he went nearly three years without winning until this past week’s RBC Heritage.

Justin Thomas could not hide his emotions on the 18th hole at Harbour Town on Sunday after making the long putt which saw him overcome Andrew Novak in a playoff. His triumph at the RBC Heritage marked his first win since the 2022 PGA Championship.

Thomas has been knocking on the door for some time however. The 31-year-old finished second three times since last year’s Tour Championship. And he ended the 2024 season fifth for strokes gained tee to green, and third around the green on the PGA Tour.

However, the putter proved to be Thomas’ Achilles heel. He was 174th for strokes gained putting last year – with only 10 players performing worse than him in that category.

The notable change Justin Thomas made to his putting at the RBC Heritage

There has been a remarkable improvement this time around, with Thomas inside the top 25 right now. So it was fitting that it was a lengthy putt on the first extra hole which sealed the victory for the American at Harbour Town.

And it seems that Thomas has made some notable changes to his putting. Speaking on The Second Cut Golf Podcast, Rick Gehman suggested that he spotted something new in how Thomas approached putts.

“The other thing that I’ve not seen Justin Thomas do before, and I want to see if you noticed this or if I’m making it up – when he was standing over a putt, you could see his eyes and his head trace the line of the putt, which is not something I had ever seen him do before,” he said.

“And I watched him do it obviously all week long, and I’m wondering now if that was something, they talked about this putting lesson or putting discussion that he had with Xander Schauffele recently, I’m wondering if that’s something he’s picked up at some point here in the short-term because I’ve never really seen him do that before.”

The remarkable improvement Justin Thomas has made on the greens since the 2024 season

Thomas was one of the players who went into the RBC Heritage having played about as well as he could have done without actually winning on the PGA Tour this year. Apart from the fact that he would have been feeling the pressure, it seemed inevitable that his drought would end sooner rather than later.

What is encouraging for Thomas is that many of his statistics remain impressive while his putting has improved. There has barely been a big drop-off in another part of his game in recent months – though he will want to perform significantly better off the tee.

That makes him one player to look out for as major championship season gets into full swing. Now he has removed the burden of waiting for a win, there appears to be very little holding him back.