NAPLES, Fla. — Jeeno Thitikul capped off her finest 12 months with the most important payoff in ladies’s golf, alongside together with her place within the LPGA document e-book with the bottom scoring common within the tour’s 75-year historical past.
As simple as she made it look Sunday with a four-shot victory within the CME Group Tour Championship, she has recollections of the street not all the time being so easy.
There was that four-putt end to lose the Kroger Queen Metropolis Championship two months in the past.
“I’ve the ice pack put in my eyes as a result of I cried so unhealthy,” she mentioned.
Then got here a wrist damage final week from the agency turf at house in Dallas that left her unsure if she might get by means of 4 rounds at Tiburon Golf Membership within the season finale, a lot much less win. She curtailed follow classes to assist.
“I feel earlier within the week I simply saying have the ability to end 4 rounds of golf right here simply greater than I might ask for already,” she mentioned. “However standing right here with the trophy on Sunday, it is similar to greater than I actually, actually might ask for for positive.”
Contained in the ropes, she regarded each bit as dominant because the No. 1 participant in ladies’s golf.
Staked to a six-shot lead over Nelly Korda going into the ultimate day at Tiburon Golf Membership, Thitikul held off an early problem from Pajaree Anannarukarn with a pair of birdies early on the again 9 and sailed house with a 4-under 68 and a second straight title within the CME Group Tour Championship.
That meant one other examine for $4 million, the most important in ladies’s golf, pushing her season earnings to $7,578,300. That remaining birdie from 10 ft allowed her to interrupt Annika Sorenstam’s scoring document by the slimmest of margins — 68.681 for Thitikul, 68.697 for Sorenstam in 2002.
“I imply, like by no means, ever dreaming having that document in any respect,” she mentioned. “After which one time that I may be the bottom rating common in my complete profession must be actually wonderful.”
What she did not know was how shut it obtained at one level Sunday.
Anannarukarn, enjoying within the group forward of her fellow Thai, ran off 5 birdies in seven holes firstly to shut the hole to 2 photographs. It remained a two-shot lead going to the again 9.
However then Thitikul birdied the tenth and the thirteenth, and Anannarukarn dropped a shot on the par-3 twelfth. The lead was again to 5 photographs and Thitikul was house free. She simply did not take a look at a leaderboard till she obtained to the par-5 seventeenth, unaware that her Thai buddy was on her heels.
Thitikul raised each arms when the ultimate birdie dropped, and earlier than lengthy she was getting soaked with bubbly on the 18th inexperienced. Thitikul, who completed at 26-under 262, joined Jin Young Ko as the one back-to-back winners of the CME Group Tour Championship.
The victory additionally assured her profitable LPGA participant of the 12 months, an end result that was already determined as a result of Ladies’s Open champion Miyu Yamashita would have needed to win.
Korda, changed by Thitikul at No. 1 in ladies’s golf, grew to become the primary participant since Tiger Woods in 2010 to go from seven wins in a single season to none the next 12 months.
She confronted lengthy odds at six photographs behind to start out the day and fell additional again with one bogey and no birdies on the entrance 9. She holed out for eagle on No. 11 and shot 31 on the again a 68 to complete third. Korda nonetheless has the mixed-team Grant Thornton Invitational and the PNC Championship together with her father subsequent month.
Requested to explain the 12 months, Korda mentioned, “A grind.”
“I really feel like there was lots of ups and downs and it made me develop so much mentally, and I might say I am simply additionally very grateful for it as a result of success isn’t linear,” she mentioned.
