Justin Thomas’ father explains why golf wasn’t really the plan

When Justin Thomas captured his first PGA Championship in 2017, it would be easy to assume a carefully orchestrated plan had come to fruition. The 24-year-old Thomas was the son and grandson of PGA professionals, and he had already succeeded at every stage of golf. He was destined for greatness, it seemed, because that’s how it all had been mapped out for him.

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Except that’s not really true, his father Mike says. As much as his son had benefited from a rich golf background, Mike was always prepared for Justin to go in a completely different direction.

“Everybody around me projected out what Justin was going to accomplish,” Mike Thomas said as a guest on the Golf IQ podcast. “As in, he's going to play college golf and he's going to play on the tour. I never looked at it that way. I just said, ‘You know, I really don't care what he does. I just care that he has a passion for something even if he drops golf tomorrow and has a passion for investing or music.' I think every parent just wants their child to have a passion for something.”

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In the third installment of our Golf Dad series, Mike Thomas comes with a layered perspective in to the dynamic. He grew up in Ohio the son of a tough, accomplished PGA professional, Paul Thomas, then went to his own successful teaching career at Harmony Landing Country Club outside Louisville, Ky. If anyone would have been motivated to give his kid a headstart in the game, it would have been him, especially once the club’s membership embraced Justin as one of their own.

But Mike said he always proceeded with caution, because he recognized a parent’s love of golf isn’t guaranteed for the next generation.

“I see too often parents projecting through their child, ‘I want them to love it,’ and I say, ‘Well, that's what you want, but what do they want?’” Mike said. “As parents, we have to try to facilitate the wants and needs of our children, not the wants and needs of us.”

Recognizing that the kid’s perspective was most important, Mike employed a tactic teaching juniors that many thought counterintuitive. Whenever Mike met a new student, the parent would drop the child off for the lesson and volunteer to leave Mike alone to teach. But Mike insisted the parent stick around because he wanted to know what he was working with.

“I don’t tell them this, but I’m looking at the dynamic between the two,” Mike Thomas said. “Because of my history with my father and my history with my son I want to see how these two are together. Because when I see them berating this kid in front of me over a shot they hit. I know it's worse away from there than what it is. But when I see them just stay in the background, or maybe throw out an occasional encouraging, ‘That's OK, just, just stay with it,’ I can read that relationship in five balls. Obvously, the good parent-child relationships are more successful than the poor ones.”

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