Peter Malnati Earns A Win That Feeds The Soul, Justin Thomas' Enemy, And A Not Too Early Look At The Masters

Another week on the PGA Tour, another long-shot victor. That's been the trend for 2024, but Peter Malnati's win at the Valspar Championship had a different feel to it, especially after his post-round comments.

Speaking of trends, Justin Thomas is amid one that nobody wants to be a part of as his woes on the greens have hit a career worst. The putting stats from his week at the Valspar are legitimately jaw-dropping.

We're 17 days away from the opening tee shot of the 2024 Masters, and while Augusta lives up to the hype each and every year, we're inevitably headed for an all timer given the circumstances in professional golf at the moment.

We'll tackle it all in another edition of Par Talk.

Peter Malnati's Win Serves As A Refreshing Reminder

Peter Malnati finding the winner's circle doesn't exactly get the people going. He entered the week with absurdly long odds, is a player the majority of casual fans have never heard of, and is best known as the guy that wears floppy bucket hats and hits a yellow ball. 

That doesn't mean that his win at the Valspar wasn't absolutely awesome, because it was.

From a pure golf perspective, Malnati firing a final round 67 to win by two shots to leap Xander Schauffele, Cameron Young, and Mackenzie Hughes on the leaderboard at a golf course that ate most player's lunches over the weekend speaks for itself. You add the fact that just one week ago Malnati shot a final round 81 at The Players, and the 18 holes he put together on Sunday is that much more impressive.

Winning is everything out on the PGA Tour, and despite the Valspar being his first win since November of 2015, Malnati may understand that better than anyone else out on Tour. 

Keeping your Tour card for nearly a decade without a win paired with missing 133 cuts along the way is practically unheard of, yet Malnati has managed to do so all these years. To say he's a grinder is an understatement. His $1.5 million paycheck for winning the Valspar is more money than he's ever earned over the course of every one of his full seasons on Tour.

In today's world of golf where quite literally everything is about money, money, and then more money, Malnati's win serves as a reminder that not every guy inside the ropes is flush with cash necessarily. That, and not everything in the game is about a dollar figure attached to it.

"Life is hard," Malnati said after his round. "It's obviously glamorous at times like this. This is my dream job, and it's absolutely amazing. But life is really, really hard, too. When you're trying to figure out how to live this lifestyle and have two kids and be everything you want to be, it's really hard."

Some people will roll their eyes at Malnati saying his life is hard given that he's earned nearly $10 million in his career hitting a ball around a field. Those people would be failing to realize for the majority of his career, Malnati has been fighting to keep his full-time job status all while growing his family, Father Time chasing him while his co-workers somehow keep getting younger, and battling that never-ending thought of ‘will I ever win again.’

(Bucket) hats off to Malnati for not only his win, but his very real and honest thoughts after finally climbing the mountain again. 

Justin Thomas Is Battling The Putting Demons

On a far more negative note, we need to talk about Justin Thomas' putting. Or, maybe in more appropriate terms, Justin Thomas' inability to putt.

Players have bad days with the flatstick and go through cold spells, but what we saw out of Thomas at the Valspar is hard to put into words. 

When it was all said and done, Thomas finished 74th in the field in strokes gained: putting losing over 4.8 shots on the greens, but his putting performance during Saturday's third round was historic, and not in a good way.

On the first hole on Saturday, Thomas made a 2' 9'' putt for birdie. Over the next 17 holes he did not make one single putt longer than 2'9''. Not one.

His 38 putts on Saturday had a grand total of 22'10'' in length as he lost over SEVEN shots to the tournament field on the greens alone.

A professional golfer putting up those sorts of numbers is unheard of, especially from a two-time major winner.

Scottie Scheffler has spent the last year of his life being criticized for his inability to putt, and while JT has caught flack over the years too, the golf world can't simply let this performance slide.

Thomas now ranks 164th on Tour in strokes gained: putting, which isn't exactly the number you want to see just two weeks out from the Masters. 

There Is No Way The Masters Isn't Special This Year

Here's a hot take for you: this year's Masters year is going to be awesome.

But in all seriousness, I don't think that there is a reality in which the 2024 Masters doesn't meet expectations and turns into an instant classic. That's purely a perspective thing given that there is quite literally no evidence or data to predict this type of thing, but given the current state of well, everything, Augusta should be incredible.

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Toss aside the LIV Golf, Saudi PIF, and PGA Tour shenanigans that are still taking place and just look at the sports world in general. We've never been more sports-drunk than we are now, and you add that fact to the news cycle moving at a million miles per hour, it'll be nice to slow down and focus on a golf tournament with the best players walking the planet competing against one another again.

We'll be, of course, bombarded with storylines and rumors throughout the week that has very little to do with the actual golf being played on the greatest course in the world, but getting past that and soaking up Augusta National for eight hours a day for four days is going to be special.

Again, another hot take saying the Masters will be special this year. Maybe this is just me officially jumpstarting the hype for the year's first major, which I'll gladly take responsibility for.

Now, let's all take 30 seconds and send a prayer or positive vibes that Mother Nature cooperates Thursday-Sunday and we have zero setbacks.