“I would do some really, really weird things for Bud to win today,” said Justin Thomas, expressing his hopes on Bud Cauley’s victory. Not the words you hear from a competitor right before the final day of one of the most important events of your life. But that’s where Justin Thomas stands out. He has seen Bud Cauley go through all difficult circumstances in golf and life. And he knew that more than anyone else that a PLAYERS Championship title would have been the best reward for a man who refused to give up.
Cauley and Thomas’s friendship started in college. Cauley, Thomas’s senior at the University of Alabama, was a very polished amateur golfer. They did not start as friends but navigating the challenges of being a collegiate golfer, along with other young golfers at the time, brought them closer, and they ended up being roommates as well. “For sure. Yeah, we lived together for, I don’t know what it was, four, five years, something like that. Three or four. I don’t know. Something like that,” shared JT.
So, when Bud Cauley got in an accident in 2018 after the second round of the Memorial Tournament, Thomas was shocked and devastated. He ended up feeling lost. Cauley was in the passenger seat of the car in Dublin, Ohio, and ended up with six broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a broken leg. The injuries could have been career-ending, but Cauley refused to give up. He fought back to play in the PGA Tour, and despite complications from the injury forcing him out for three more years, he fought back again. JT tried his best to be there for Cauley when he was recovering.
“Yeah, we’ve both been down in Jupiter and yeah, when he was going through everything, just trying to be a friend, just like I would to anybody, let alone just a peer out here. Yeah, we just tried to keep his spirits up as much as possible because it’s pretty hard to do that,” shared the 2022 PGA Championship winner.
Thomas recalled the accident that happened during the Memorial Tournament. “Yeah, it was a lot. It all happened very fast. It just was — it was a lot. Yeah, I wanted to be there to see how my friend was doing, but, you know, it just, it was a wild, crazy, bizarre, terrible night. I wanted to go be there to see him.”
Cauley did not win the title but did end up finishing T6 with an impressive score of 9 under par, just two strokes shy of competing in the playoffs. Justin Thomas, meanwhile, finished T33 with a score of 2 under par. This should be a huge boost for Cauley in his professional golf journey, and this result should be something he builds on with more events coming in.
This is a developing story..
The post ‘Bizarre, Terrible Night’: Justin Thomas Forced to Recount Car Accident That Nearly Ended Career of Fellow PGA Tour Pro appeared first on EssentiallySports.