There was a young girl in a wheelchair waiting outside the scorers’ portacabin at the 2019 HSBC Women’s World championship in Singapore. One player after another paused to sign an autograph for the child, and then came Thailand’s Moriya Jutanugarn, sister of the 2016 Women’s British Open champion, Ariya.
When Moriya saw the girl, she came to a full-stop and switched to a squat position, the better to engage in friendly conversation. And there she stayed for several minutes, chatting quietly away to her companion. If you’ve ever met Moriya, you will know that she was simply being her usual Thai self.
Thailand is known as “the Land of Smiles” and, ever since the Thai golfers first appeared on the LET and LPGA tours, they have made for a fascinating study. As the late King Bhumibol once said of his people: “They are polite. Honorable politeness. They have courage but are not harsh – strong but gentle.”
Again, it is worth mentioning how Boonchu Ruangkit, one of the country’s more famous male golfers, once advised that Tiger was thrice blessed in having a Thai mother. He said that her ways, with particular reference to her powers of meditation, had seeped from mother to son. “You see it in Tiger’s on-course serenity and in the respect he has for his elders,” said Ruangkit. “He always affords people the courtesy of looking them in the eye.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Tiger, of course, was reared in America, whereas the Thai women on the LPGA and LET tours spent their earliest golfing days in the hands of kindly Thai administrators who had a very different way of doing things from their opposite numbers in the West. To record what their golfers have achieved on the ‘major’ front in the last eight years, Ariya Jutanugarn captured the 2016 Women’s British Open and followed up with a win in the US Open two years later. And, three years on from then, Patty Tavatanakit sprang from nowhere to win what was then the ANA championship and now The Chevron.
The leading light of the moment is Atthaya Thitikul who, though she has only just turned 20, finished in the top three in the ’22 Rolex World Rankings behind Lydia Ko and Nelly Korda. Last December, at a time when she was still at the top of that list, the Royal Thai Embassy in Washington sent out a press release to say as much.
For the moment, though, Thitikul is no different from Moriya Jutanugarn in waiting to add a major to her mounting earnings. Thitikul was nine when she…
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