One of golf’s next big things, Davis Thompson gets PGA Tour Win No. 1 at John Deere Classic

SILVIS, Ill. — It didn’t take clairvoyant powers to see Jordan Spieth and Bryson DeChambeau as golf superstars-to-be when they won their first PGA Tour events at the John Deere Classic.

Spieth did so in 2013 and DeChambeau in 2017. Both advanced to the echelon of winners of multiple major championships, players who need no introduction to golf followers.

Clip and save: A 25-year-old named Davis Thompson will be in the same stratosphere soon enough.

“I don’t think that’s inaccurate,” said Zach Johnson, a two-time majors-winner himself, by way of a youth spent in Cedar Rapids.

“What does Davis do well?” Johnson asked himself. “Well … everything.”

Johnson is one of at least a dozen Tour players who live in St. Simons Island, Ga. So is Thompson. His father, Todd Thompson, is the tournament director of the Tour’s RSM Classic on that island. Johnson has played many a round of golf with Davis Thompson there.

“I’ve always been impressed with his game,” said Johnson, a former winner here who shot a 5-under 66 Sunday to finish the JDC tied for 26th.

“We saw it coming about two, three months ago. … He's in that talent realm that what I'm seeing and what we're seeing, if you know him, it's not surprising.”

Sunday, Thompson crushed the JDC field to win his first Tour title. The first of perhaps many. He shot a tourney-record 28-under-par over 72 holes.

He became the 24th JDC player to get his first Tour win here. Many slid back into anonymity soon after thinking they had emerged from it. Others, like Spieth and DeChambeau, bounced to next-level successes.

Thompson came to the Quad Cities with future golf blue-blood stamped on him. He was first in the World Amateur Golf Ranking in 2020 and 2021. He twice was a first-team All-American for Georgia’s great men’s golf program.

He had three second-place finishes in his first two seasons on the big Tour, including last weekend’s tourney in Detroit. He tied for ninth in this year’s U.S. Open.

“My goal (here) was to kind of kick the door down,” Thompson said.

Thompson entered the final round with a 2-shot lead and tripled that cushion by birdieing five of his first six holes, starting with a 44-foot birdie putt on hole No. 1. Nothing comes easily for chasers of win No. 1, though, and that lead was halved to three shots as Thompson reached the 14th tee.

That was as theatrical as things got. He birdied No. 14 after putting his approach shot from the rough within 3 feet of the cup. The most emotion Thompson showed all day was when he met his wife on the 18th green after sinking his 2-foot par putt for a 4-shot triumph.

Holly Grace Robinson Thompson attended a wedding in Wilmington, N.C., Saturday, then left there at 6 a.m. Sunday to make it to Moline in time to catch the tail end of the tournament.

Asked if her introverted husband (“He’s very cool, calm and collected,” she said) is as soft-spoken around her as he is in public, her response was “He talks to me, sometimes.”

“When he put his head into my shoulder (when they embraced Sunday), it just became real to me that this is what he’s been working toward.”

“I played great all week,” her husband said.

“It just feels great. … I’m just so thankful to be the champion.”

Oh, two of the three players who tied for second place are 22-year-old Michael Thorbjornsen and 20-year-old Florida State junior Luke Clanton. Thompson secured an Open Championship berth with the win, and will play at Royal Troon next week. This week, it’s the Scottish Open, traveling with 33 fellow pros on the JDC’s charter flight to Edinburgh Sunday night.

Asked what his goals were now that he has a win to his credit, Thompson said “I’m not really thinking about that right now. I’m just hopefully trying to get some sleep on the chartered flight.“

He may have to work on the star power, but a star he likely will be.

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