SBS Tournament of Champions results: Justin Thomas begins 2017 with Kapalua win

The first PGA Tour event of the new year was a blowout. It was over early. I would not call you a complete idiot for switching over to the Giants-Packers game with about 90 minutes still remaining in the final round of the SBS Tournament of Champions.

That’s because Justin Thomas was running away, starting the day with a nice two-shot cushion and keeping Hideki Matsuyama, the hottest player in the world, at arm’s length. Thomas not only kept Matsuyama off his back, he extended his lead to set up what looked like a comfortable cruise to the biggest win of his nascent career.

Then it came undone late on the back nine and we got the kind of JT-Hideki back-and-forth battle that we’d hoped for at the start of the day. Thomas stood on the 14th tee with a five-shot lead, an enormous margin given his consistency all week (and in recent months). But Matsuyama kept his hope alive with a ridiculous hole-out on the 14th that made Thomas keep working and cut the deficit to three with four holes to play.

That two-shot swing would be backed up by yet another two-shot swing on the 15th, but this one was the result of a JT gag, not some Matsuyama brilliance. From the middle of the fairway on a par-5, Thomas yanked his approach shot in the middle of the hazard. It was his first big ugly mistake of the week and things started to tighten. After taking a good beat to figure out where the hell to drop the ball, Thomas duffed a wedge and then walked off with a double-bogey that cut the deficit to just one. Four shots were gone in two holes.

It was ugly. Thomas was not just leaking oil but looked out of gas and on his way to a heartbreaking choke. Matsuyama, who had four wins and a runner-up in his previous five starts, was closing in for the late victory.

Then the Thomas so many know and love returned, the one with the swagger and stones that have made him an up-and-coming fan favorite. With the precarious one-shot lead in the 17th fairway, Thomas dropped an absolute dart on top of the flagstick to re-take control and not give the brilliant and streaking Matsuyama a chance. The shot was so good that Thomas started walking after it on the damn follow-through. The ball wasn’t just peaking, or tracking, it had just left his club and he knew it was pure.

That was a tap-in birdie. A Matsuyama three-putt made it academic with one-hole to play. This was a wild five-hole stretch where we saw the best and worst of two of the top young stars in the game.

Thomas has won on the PGA Tour before, taking the CIMB Classic in Malaysia twice in the last three years. But this win, out of a field that’s a winners-only event from the preceding year and included Jordan Spieth, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson, and Bubba Watson, is the biggest of his career and a potential launchpad for 2017.

Thomas already had big things ahead of him, but starting the year in this way can only help accelerate the breakout. Thomas is now No. 12 in the world and will continue to be a trendy pick at the biggest events, including majors.

Here are your final results from Kapalua: