Justin Thomas came to the defense of U.S. Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk regarding the Patrick Reed/Jordan Spieth controversy.
To recap: Reed told The New York Times that he was “blindsided” by Furyk’s decision to break him up with Spieth, despite the two compiling an 8-1-3 record in team play (Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup). Instead, the 47-year old captain paired up Spieth with his close friend Thomas. The two 25-year old American stars went on to record a 3-1 record, while Reed struggled badly playing alongside Tiger Woods.
“That was something obviously that had been talked about in advance, but all I was worried about was I knew that I was going to play with Jordan and we were worrying about taking care of our point and taking care of our match.” Thomas said at a press conference ahead of the CIMB Classic in Malaysia.
“It’s a team event, and it’s a team week, and we’re all worried about each other, but that’s kind of our thing, is we do our job. Jordan and I’s job was to go out and get a point, and that’s what we were fortunate enough to at least get three out of four.”
Thomas was one of the lone bright spots for the losing American squad, going 4-1 in his Ryder Cup debut, including a Sunday singles victory over Rory McIlroy.
Thomas said the lingering controversy has overshadowed the strong performance by the Europeans at Le Golf National in Paris.
“It’s so easy to look at the captains and say it’s their fault, but at the end of the day we didn’t play well enough,” Thomas continued.
“The Europeans played exponentially better than we did – that’s why they beat us as bad as they did. It’s easy to look at pairings and say, well, we should have done this or we could have done that, but it doesn’t matter if you put the two winningest guys of all time together: If they don’t play well, they’re going to lose.
“Everybody has their own thoughts and feelings, but at the end of the day we just didn’t play well enough.”