Thomas Detry knew his talent was enough to win on the PGA TOUR, and his peers knew it too. “Freakishly talented,” said Justin Thomas, who first met Detry at the 2010 Junior Ryder Cup.
First, though, Detry needed to win the battle against himself.
Detry earned his first PGA TOUR title Sunday at the WM Phoenix Open, closing with four straight birdies at TPC Scottsdale for a 24-under total, seven strokes clear of Michael Kim and Daniel Berger. Detry began the final round with a five-stroke lead and extended it to six on the front nine; Berger pulled within three strokes midway through the final nine, but Detry answered the bell with four consecutive closing birdies at one of golf’s most raucous events. With his first professional victory since the Challenge Tour’s 2016 Bridgestone Challenge, Detry became the first Belgian to win on the PGA TOUR.
It was all made possible through internal improvements. Detry has a tendency for forward-thinking, creating mental pictures in his head of what could be, which runs counter to the TOUR-speak ideal of sticking to the process in every moment. Within the past two years, and with the encouragement of his wife Sarah and a cousin, Detry decided to work with a psychologist and dive into the world of meditation. A session might not take longer than 10 minutes, and Detry admits it wasn’t easy at first, but the benefits have been far-reaching. “At the start when you start meditating, your mind just rushes all over the place and you’re meditating but you’re just thinking about what you’re going to eat tonight,” he laughed Sunday. “But then the more you actually do it, the more you’re able to recognize those moments when your mind just kind of rushes, and it gets you back into the present moment.”
Detry’s work paid off Sunday, notably on the par-5 13th hole, where he three-putted for par as his playing partner Berger made birdie to pull within three. A previous version of Detry might have become flustered and let the adversity throw him off his routine. The WM Phoenix Open, where fans might shout any number of things at any given moment, offers the ultimate test for a TOUR pro’s mental game.
Detry answered the bell. As his wife Sarah has noticed in recent months, it traces to his decision to treat his mind as a muscle.
“I think just working on it full stock, basically, because you think, ‘Maybe I don’t potentially need help with that.’ But the second that you start working on it, however much you get done, the fact that you’re working on it, as much as you need to go work on chipping, you need to go work on putting, you need to work on what’s going on in your brain as well,” Sarah said Sunday afternoon.
“I think when you know that you’re making steps in the right direction, then you’ve already got the power inside you. So it’s been a massive asset to him, I think, the last few months.”
Detry’s golf story is far from finished, but in many ways, his first TOUR title is the culmination of a decade-plus stateside golf journey. He came from Belgium to attend the University of Illinois, and now he’s Belgium’s first PGA TOUR winner. Detry’s ball-striking was elite as a junior player, but he honed his competitive edge throughout his college career, living with Charlie Danielson (who spent time as a touring pro before knee injuries pushed him to a career in player management) for four years at Illinois.
Danielson followed along Sunday from his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, recalling all the times that Detry would wake up at 5 a.m. to have a coffee and work out. Detry didn’t have a car in college, so he’d bike around campus. He was a business major who got straight As. “You could tell he had a purpose,” University of Illinois men’s golf coach Mike Small said Sunday. Detry and Danielson often competed in intense short-game challenges before class at the team facility, with the intensity often leading to clubs being thrown. That intensity sometimes translated a bit too hard to the course. With the guidance of mentors like Small and Danielson, Detry gradually became more emotionally balanced inside the ropes, setting the stage for a consistent career upon turning pro in 2016.
Detry has made 161 career DP World Tour starts, and before Sunday, he had made 67 TOUR starts. He had recorded seven runner-up finishes, but a title eluded him. His game was ready, but he needed to identify that missing link. It came between the ears, and it paid off Sunday at the PGA TOUR venue most likely to cause eardrum reverberations.
“I just constantly, especially when I’m doing well, just project myself and just imagine myself winning, and it just … I can feel my heartbeat going,” Detry said Sunday. “I can feel my breathing getting out of control a little bit, and that meditation really helps me stay in the present. You’re going to have those moments where your mind is just going to go there, but it’s just the fact of being able to recognize that moment, ‘Oh, my mind is going ahead now, I’m going to start rushing,’ so just use that tool and bring yourself back to the present moment, and that’s really what I’ve been able to do very well this week.”
There’s a television in the WM Phoenix Open’s interview tent, and Jordan Spieth (T4) smiled as he watched Detry drain a 10-foot closing birdie and meet his family on the green. Justin Thomas (T6) alluded to the inevitability of Detry’s breakthrough, as did runner-up Michael Kim.
“He got me again,” said Kim afterward, laughing while recalling a Detry-led Illinois squad taking down Kim’s California-Berkeley squad in the 2013 NCAA semifinals.
Detry “got” the entire field at the WM Phoenix Open. The mind suggests he’s far from done.
