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 GREENSBORO -- The kids are coming. And they're better than you can possibly imagine.

We've heard it before. Saw it with our own eyes when the kids rolled through here a decade ago, just passing through Greensboro on their way to stardom. In many ways, we're still waiting.

On the second day of the Wyndham Championship, a 16-year-old jumped onto the leaderboard and we were suddenly back in 1998 with young Sergio Garcia walking across the hot plains of Sedgefield on his way to glory.

Justin Thomas, one week removed from winning a high school tournament and two months after winning the AJGA FootJoy Invitational here, finished a 65 in the morning and came back with a 72 in the afternoon that left him bristling.

Not unlike Sergio.

"I was thinking of winning," Thomas said.

He should. Thomas has won 109 tournaments since taking up the game at the age of 2. At 16, he's the hottest player in the junior ranks. Friday, he became the third youngest player to make the cut in a PGA Tour event.

Sergio once was the hottest junior in the land. He came here as an 18-year-old in 1998 and almost won the Nike Greensboro Open as an amateur. Entering the third day of the Wyndham Championship, he's two off the lead and thinking about completing what he started all those years ago.

"I'm still not happy with the way I played," Garcia said after a 64 that has him poised for a weekend run at his first tournament win in more than a year.

Garcia was known as "El Nino" when he burst onto the golf scene 12 years ago as an amateur from Spain. "The next Ballesteros," one columnist called him here in 1998.

"I have good memories about this place," Garcia said. "I don't remember some of the holes. I remember four or five of them from 12 years ago. When you're reaching 30, you know, Alzheimer's starts coming in, so you don't remember as well as you used to."

He's 29 now, still chasing the unreasonable expectations, still running down the promise of youth, of a time when it seemed a foregone conclusion that he would be great and lead a wave of great young players chasing down Tiger and the aging stars of the last century. We know now the window of youth closes fast.

Enter young Justin Thomas.

He's here because the June win in the FootJoy came with an exemption to the PGA event on the same course. He's playing on the weekend because he's that good.

"He's not afraid of this," his dad, Mike, said after caddying for his kid and skipping the member-member back home in Goshen, Ky., where he's the pro at Harmony Landing. "The AJGA is so competitive, so good, not to take anything away from the great players out here, but he's used to the 65 or 66 you have to shoot."

Justin has no nickname. He's only 130 pounds and maybe 5-feet-9, a kid who made a name for himself when he scored his first ace at the age of 6. His dad has tried to keep his only child focused on golf, out of the malls and off the streets, hoping for a shot at fleeting glory.

"It's a shot in the dark," Mike Thomas said.

They've been coming out for years, coming out of the colleges and the international junior ranks to take that shot, and some of them make it and most don't. Justin's probably not aware of that, and why should he be? He's 16 and the next great thing.

Sergio was the next great thing in 1998, and he still is. Charles Howell III came here as an amateur in 2000, destined for greatness. They were all juniors once, and they all saw how Tiger made it look so possible. Bill Haas was a three-time All-American at Wake Forest, a two-time ACC Player of the Year.

Everybody's a former All-American out here, he said Friday. Haas is 27, still looking for his first PGA Tour win. Garcia, at 29, is still looking for his first major. Justin Thomas, at 16, is looking to go out this weekend and steal the Wyndham Championship. He said he's not nervous about it, either.

"Not at all," he said.

He's one of a new wave coming through the AJGA, a remarkably talented bunch raised on competition and the courage to think big. Thomas finished off a morning 65 and considered the possibilities.

"I was up near the lead, and I was thinking about winning," he said.

Thomas doesn't fear what's ahead of him. He has no way of knowing. He doesn't want to be patted on the back for becoming the third youngest player to make a PGA Tour cut. He wants to win.

Just as Sergio does. And Howell, and Haas and all the young players who've been coming out here for years trying to become the next great thing.

Justin Thomas, hardened by success in the fast-encroaching junior ranks, is the next great thing this weekend.

And he's 16 years old.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com