A late name off the Asheville sheet
Justin Thomas withdrew from the Biltmore Championship Asheville on Sunday, days before the tournament was due to open the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Fall.
The event runs Thursday through Sunday at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove in Asheville, North Carolina. It is new to the calendar, and it carries real weight for a large part of the field. Several dozen players will spend the autumn chasing points that keep their tour cards, and the Biltmore is where that scramble begins.
Thomas was never one of them. He finished 43rd in this season’s FedEx Cup race, clear of any card worries, so the week was optional in every sense that matters to his schedule.
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The Presidents Cup was the reason to tee it up
What made the entry interesting was timing. The Presidents Cup follows the week after, and four competitive rounds in Asheville would have given Thomas something closer to sharpness than a range session.
Brandt Snedeker named him one of six captain’s picks for the United States side. At 33, Thomas arrives with a record that explains the call: 16 PGA Tour titles and four Ryder Cup appearances. This will be his fourth Presidents Cup.
Cameron Champ takes the vacated spot in the Biltmore field, which matters rather more to Champ than it did to Thomas. The fall stretch is the last chance for players outside the top 100 to sort out their status, and every opening in a limited field gets spoken for quickly.
What is actually on the record
Thomas gave no reason for the withdrawal, and none was listed. What is known is the calendar. No golf this week, then a team event starting the following Thursday, with a captain who has already staked a selection on him.
He has played the Presidents Cup three times before and the Ryder Cup four, so the format holds no surprises. Whether arriving cold suits him is a different question, and one the first session will answer.
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