Players 2026: Why Justin Thomas has six different weather apps on his phone

PONTE VEDRA BEACH — Professional golfers are creatures of habit, with little appetite for the unseen. Which could explain why Justin Thomas’ phone is littered with weather applications.

Thomas is making just his second start in 2026 after undergoing microdiscectomy in November. But instead of speaking about his comeback ahead of this week’s Players Championship, Thomas was confronted at the start of his media session at TPC Sawgrass with a bit of an off-the-wall question: How much do you monitor the weather? Given how much the PGA Tour is predicated off Mother Nature, a fair inquiry, and by the sounds of it, Thomas isn't leaving it up to the weatherman.

“I have six weather apps,” Thomas said, looking at his phone. “I have The Weather Channel app is just kind of my standard weather app, but The Weather Bug is my optimistic weather app. I'm a huge weather optimist. Like people, you know, rightfully so, but you see a chance of storms and it's oh, you know, you look at the weather today for the rest of the week and Thursday's going be a rain-out. I'm like, no it's not. It's going to get better. It's going to be fine. Yeah, there's a chance of rain, but it could be overnight and there's a lot that can happen. Like it's going to be fine.”

Thomas explained his addiction is mostly due to “packing purposes” on the clothing front—particularly tricky given he doesn’t have an apparel sponsorship at the moment—yet also expressed a practical explanation for his game.

“If I'm looking, I'll check more so the wind direction or kind of where it's coming from before I'm going to warm-up, or if it's like a long walk to the first tee, even I'll look at it and you can kind of get an idea of where it is in my warm-up and go from there,” Thomas said.

Given all the vagaries involved in golf, eliminating any potential curveballs makes sense. Conversely, Thomas is also working on giving himself grace for the unexpected. He struggled in his return last week at Bay Hill, shooting back-to-back 79s at the Arnold Palmer Invitational to miss the cut. Thomas said he’s usually rusty after taking time off when it comes to the mental game, especially when it comes to plotting around a golf course, and was expecting his scores to reflect that. But expecting and accepting are different beasts.

“I was really, really, really down and bummed Friday,” Thomas said. “There’s no scenario where I'm OK and think that it's fine to shoot that poorly and put those kind of scores up.

“I just needed a little bit of time to decompress and think about it and just almost regroup, if you will. It’s just is something where just kind of, just get back to work and keep working on the things—don't feel like I need to blow it up and restart and do all these things differently. It's continuing to work on the things I'm working on and continue to give attention to things that need attention to. But also, yeah, see areas that I could improve on after, you know, not a great week, and I had a lot of those areas.”

TPC Sawgrass doesn’t seem particularly conducive to success, but Thomas is a previous winner here, back in 2021, and tied the course record (62) just last year. And, on the matter of forecasts, Thomas like what he sees with his game.

“In the big picture it's like if I struggle at the beginning of the year to come back from this injury and I go win a couple majors this year, like nobody's going to remember that I just shot 14-over at Bay Hill, right?” Thomas said. “So it's just about just keep plugging away and just keep trying to get better and not let any kind of injury be a hindrance on hopefully along successful career.”