{"id":433834,"date":"2025-03-22T06:39:03","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T10:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/?p=433834"},"modified":"2025-04-23T16:39:52","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T16:39:52","slug":"justin-thomas-battles-to-keep-cut-streak-alive-at-valspar-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/justin-thomas-battles-to-keep-cut-streak-alive-at-valspar-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Thomas Battles to Keep Cut Streak Alive at Valspar Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An $8.7 million purse is up for grabs as the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2025\/03\/19\/2025-valspar-championship-odds-best-bets-and-analysis\/\" target=\"_self\">2025 Valspar Championship<\/a> gets underway at Innisbrook Resort&#8217;s Copperhead Course. The Championship is part of the PGA Tour&#8217;s Florida swing and offers players the opportunity to earn important <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/golf\/rankings\/cup-points\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">FedEx Cup Points<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2025\/03\/15\/justin-thomas-comeback-players-championship\/\" target=\"_self\">Justin Thomas<\/a> showed remarkable resilience to post a two-road total of 1-over 143 after a challenging start on Thursday. The 31-year-old carded a daunting 73 with an opening nine that crumbled into a 40 as he struggled in the first round with four consecutive bogeys. However, he responded brilliantly with just one bogey across the next 27 holes to keep his cut streak alive.<\/p>\n<p>The American recorded an important 16-foot birdie on the par-4 seventh hole to put him within reach of making the cut. The top 65 and ties advanced to the final two rounds at the Valspar and the line lingered between 1-over and 2-over late yesterday-representing a 61% and 39% chance respectively.<\/p>\n<h2>Thomas Optimistic Of Maintaining Cut Streak<\/h2>\n<p>After his remarkable comeback where he ended with a course-tying 62 in Friday&#8217;s second round, Justin Thomas said that watching the cut projections was psychological. The 31-year-old is facing increased pressure to keep his cut streak going.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s like a drug,\u201d Thomas replied when asked about monitoring the cut line. \u201cYou just keep getting more and more of it and it&#8217;s not good for you at all and you get pissed off and you&#8217;re mad at bounces and putts lipping out and the wind dying down. But it is what it is, I can&#8217;t control it, I should have just played better and wouldn&#8217;t be here.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2025\/03\/03\/joe-highsmith-career-cognizant-classic\/\" target=\"_self\">PGA Tour<\/a> models probability indicated that the probability of the cut line backpedaling to even-par was zero. However, the American finished his second round early on Friday to increase the chances of the cut live returning to even-par.<\/p>\n<h2>Chasing History and Eyeing Victory<\/h2>\n<p>Thomas knew the Valspar leaderboard was bunched to the point where two low rounds could be enough to move him into cut line contention on Sunday. The Louisville-born star has yet to miss a cut since the 2024 U.S Open. Besides keeping his cut streak alive, Thomas would also be hoping to win the tournament and could take motivation from Joe Highsmith. The 24-year old made the cut on the number at the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2025\/03\/03\/joe-highsmith-career-cognizant-classic\/\" target=\"_self\">Cognizant Classic<\/a> and went on to win the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s\u2026more often more nerve-wracking than trying to win a golf tournament, just because \u2013 especially a week like this, like I&#8217;m literally nine holes from leading the golf tournament right now, and I might not even get to play this weekend,\u201d Thomas added. \u201cSo it sucks, because I&#8217;m really \u2013 I really played well today and a lot of things are going well, but, you know, I just have to hope and hope somehow the wind keeps blowing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit: \u00a9 Reinhold Matay-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An $8.7 million purse is up for grabs as the 2025 Valspar Championship gets underway at Innisbrook Resort&#8217;s Copperhead Course. The Championship is part of the PGA Tour&#8217;s Florida swing and offers players the opportunity to earn important FedEx Cup Points. Justin Thomas showed remarkable resilience to post a two-road total of 1-over 143 after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4860,"featured_media":433837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,19],"tags":[97,271,50,307],"class_list":["post-433834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-pga","tag-fedex-cup","tag-joe-highsmith","tag-justin-thomas","tag-valspar-championship"],"modified_by":"yobodev","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}