Golf pro Justin Thomas on how playing 7 holes with Michael Jordan earned him a car
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Justin Thomas, at 16, teamed with Michael Jordan for 7 holes to help fund his first car.
- Thomas spoke to a Charlotte breakfast club Tuesday in advance of Truist Championship.
- The first major title that Thomas ever won was the 2017 PGA Championship in Charlotte.
PGA golfer Justin Thomas told a lot of stories when he spoke Tuesday morning in Charlotte at the Hood Hargett Breakfast Club, but the real crowd-pleaser came when he unspooled the one about Michael Jordan.
Jordan, it turns out, indirectly financed Thomas’ first car, at age 16.
And how exactly did that happen?
For starters, you need to know that Thomas is from Louisville, and his father was the longtime golf pro at Harmony Landing Country Club just outside of Louisville.
“MJ would come to the Kentucky Derby pretty much every year for a while,” Thomas said. “And one of his friends who he played with in the NBA — Junior Bridgeman — is from Louisville. Junior and my dad knew each other.”
That was the connection. And so every May, around the time of the Derby, the NBA legend and his cronies would come to Harmony Landing for at least one round of golf. Money, of course, was involved.
At first, Thomas would just be their “bag boy,” as he termed it. But Jordan — who always called Thomas “Little Man” — knew that the player now known as “JT” was a good junior golfer. And so when Thomas was 16, Jordan decided to organize a new betting game.
“The last year they came there were seven holes left,” Thomas recounted to a sellout crowd of 350. “And (Jordan) said, ‘Little Man, tell your dad to go get your clubs.’... And then he goes, ‘All right, I’ve got Little Man (as his partner). We’ll take whoever wants us.’”
Jordan’s friends all wanted some of that action, figuring they could beat Jordan (who loves the game of golf but has never mastered it) and a teenager. Jordan told everyone they would just bet “the normal amount” on those final seven holes because, as Thomas said Tuesday, he didn’t want to “freak me out” about the amount of money at stake.
What happened then?
“I made four birdies in seven holes,” Thomas recounted, “and I paid for my first car.”
The car was a Honda Civic, Thomas said, so it’s not like he made tens of thousands of dollars that day. Still, as he once told TV talk-show host Stephen Colbert, Jordan did give him “three or four thousand” as his share of the winnings, all in $100s.
“That was a nice little payday,” Thomas said.
Now ranked 17th in the Official World Golf Ranking, Thomas will be one of the crowd favorites this week as the Truist Championship returns to Charlotte Thursday through Sunday. He has career earnings of more than $71 million and 16 PGA Tour wins. He has won two major championships — the first one coming in the PGA Championship in 2017 in Charlotte.
“This city will always be very special to me and have a warm place in my heart,” Thomas said. “Because you only have one first major.”
During his 45-minute Q&A with a moderator and the crowd, Thomas also opined on:
- LIV Golf and whether the PGA should welcome back the players who left for the rival league: “I’m very fortunate that I don’t have to make that decision, as that’s above my pay grade… I know those guys are going to be back at some point… But, you know, they made a decision and it’s going to come with some kind of consequence, you would think.”
- The importance of learning from failure. “If you are arguably the greatest to ever play the sport, your winning percentage is going to be maybe 10%. So you leave the majority of the weeks failing, and not winning.”
- His dream foursome: “My dad, my grandpa and Tiger (Woods).”
This story was originally published May 6, 2026 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Golf pro Justin Thomas on how playing 7 holes with Michael Jordan earned him a car."
