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The first tournament of 2017 is in the books, and it was a surprisingly great one. I say "surprisingly" not because it didn't include a great field, but because tournaments with just 32 golfers are rarely as compelling as this one was up until the very end on Sunday evening as Justin Thomas took down Hideki Matsuyama by three strokes.

Tournaments like this one rarely deliver two of the best young stars of the next generation trading daggers down the back nine of such a picturesque landscape like Hawaii. It was everything we could have hoped for from the debut of golf on the PGA Tour in 2017, and hopefully it sets the tone for the entire year.

Here are five things we learned at the Tournament of Champions last week.

1. Justin Thomas is a superstar: Thomas' problem coming up has been more Jordan Spieth-related than anything else. He has long been tied to his junior golf pal, and with Spieth already having bagged two majors, that has made Thomas' trajectory look pedestrian by comparison.

I saw a headline on Monday that said Justin Thomas has "finally" arrived as a star. He's 23 years old! He has three wins on the PGA Tour in his first 73 starts. He has a better career winning percentage than Rickie Fowler, Bubba Watson, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Justin Rose and is on par with Adam Scott. That's a list!

Thomas is not a future star. He is not even a current star. He is an American superstar and has been at every level of golf he has ever played.

"I think it's potentially floodgates opening," said Spieth of Thomas' victory. "The guy hits it forever. He's got a really, really nifty short game. He manages the course well. He used to hit more drivers and he's dialing back a bit now and hitting like a trusty 2-iron out there that he can still hit 285 yards. He's playing the golf course the way it should be played, and honestly, he's taking advantage of the easier holes."

Speaking of floodgates, Thomas emptied barrels and barrels of #TourSauce into the Pacific Ocean all week long. Just millions of gallons of the stuff. Future scientists will wonder if global warming or Justin Thomas caused ocean levels to rise in 2017.

2. Hideki Matsuyama needs the Masters to be in February: Thomas might have won, but Matsuyama kept his belt as the hottest player alive with another epic performance. In his last six events, Thomas is the only human who has defeated him on the golf course. His Masters odds are plummeting. Matsuyama has finished in the top seven at Augusta each of the last two years. He is an outrageous talent who has seemingly found his own formula for contending every week in any tournament. Beware, PGA Tour, we could be in for the Year of The Hideki.

3. Jordan Spieth still has another gear: We forget about Spieth's sixth gear because he so often plays a style of golf that belies it. He is steady and consistent and a precise putter, but that sort of hides the fact that he can really move it off the tee. He averaged 295 yards on his drives last year which was barely outside the top 50 on the PGA Tour, and he crushed all week in Kapalua after a so-so first round.

His field-best 65 on an enormous course on Sunday was spectacular, and while he might not have the same late-tournament gear as a Dustin Johnson or Rory McIlroy, he can still get up and go with most anybody on the planet. That combination of power, when paired properly with his overbearing mental game, is a deadly combination. Of all the great golfers on the PGA Tour, Spieth might be the easiest to forget how good he actually is.

4. Thomas was really upset by the Ryder Cup picks: It was intriguing to hear Thomas candidly discuss how hurt he was by not making the Ryder Cup team in 2016.

"That was the No. 1 goal I had last year, and that really, really hurt not making that team," said Thomas. "I had a great opportunity. I should have if I just would have played like I know I could have or how I felt like I should have. But I just was thinking about it too much, and I put too much heat on myself.

"I don't know how close it was -- but I really felt like if I had posted a good number on Sunday, I had a great chance to make that team," said Thomas of the season-ending Tour Championship. "I felt like it was a lot more pressure than having to win a golf tournament because of how bad I wanted to be on that team. I just love those team events, and I just love that kind of brotherhood and those things that you have as a team together. [I] just wanted to be a part of it. I felt like I handled adversity well and I handled the pressure well. Just didn't play well enough."

This is an ethos that is particular to this generation of golfers, I believe. I'm not sure you would have heard Tiger Woods or David Duval or Mark O'Meara discuss this same thing after winning the opening tournament of a new year. It clearly resonates with folks like Thomas, though, which can only be a good thing for the U.S. in future Ryder Cups.

5. Closing (and thus winning) is (still) amazingly difficult: I often think of those famous runaway wins we've seen in the past. Rory McIlroy at the 2011 U.S. Open. Jimmy Walker in Hawaii a few years ago. Jason Day at the BMW Championship and The Barclays in 2015. Then I'm reminded, like I was on Sunday when Thomas nearly put the trophy in Matsuyama's locker down the back nine, of just how insanely hard it is to shut down a PGA Tour event against the best players in the world.

What looked like a sure thing for Thomas turned in an instant on the back nine on Sunday as Matsuyama made an absurd shot from the thick stuff for an eagle-2.

The ability to eventually flip that momentum, though, and stem the tide is what makes guys like Thomas so great. He discussed that a little bit after the event.

"It entered my mind," said Thomas of choking away the event. "It wasn't like, 'oh, crap, I can't blow this' sort of thing. More like, 'man, this would suck' sort of thing, I guess you could say. I felt confident. I felt like I was still going to get it done."