At Chevron, World No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul faces ‘challenge of her career’

HOUSTON — Jeeno Thitikul hears the noise. The World No. 1 knows the questions are coming, and only one thing can make them disappear. Unfortunately, to this point, it’s the one question Thitikul has been unable to answer as she has risen to the top of the women’s golf world.

Thitikul has won a lot in her young career. She has 21 professional wins, including eight on the LPGA and five on the Ladies European Tour. She has won back-to-back CME Group Tour Championships, two Vare Trophies, and was named the LPGA’s Player of the Year in 2025 when she was one of just two players to win multiple titles. 

But for all her talent and accomplishments, Thitikul hasn’t ascended the biggest mountain. Major glory has eluded her. She has nine top-10s in 27 major starts as a pro. She held the 36-hole lead at the 2024 Chevron Championship but faded on the weekend as Nelly Korda went on to win. She watched Minjee Lee blow by her on the weekend at the 2025 KPMG Women’s PGA, and then saw Grace Kim track her down and beat her in dramatic fashion at the Evian. 

Thitikul’s major dreams have been within her grasp, but she has watched them slip through her fingers several times as if she were trying to grab smoke. 

Last year, at the Chevron and KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, Thitikul brushed aside the idea of feeling the pressure to win a major championship — to take the step fitting her world-class talent. 

“Every major, I just want to make the cut, to be honest,” Thitikul said, with a laugh, at PGA Frisco last year. “It would be really great to win it, and definitely I can tell that it would be like everyone dreams to win a major. To me, what I have now under my belt, I’m pretty happy with all I’ve achieved. If I can get it, it would be great, but if not, I don’t have anything to regret.”

At last year’s Chevron, Thitikul, with the invincibility of youth radiating off her, said she would be totally fine if she never won a major. That’s the perspective that stems from a humble upbringing in Ratchaburi, Thailand, a small town not too far from Bangkok that didn’t have a golf course. Thitikul has always had a great sense of perspective. She learned the game from her grandfather and pursued it professionally to give her family a better life. Given her career earnings, she has already done that. Whatever comes next is extra. That’s the gift of being young, of having only light ahead of you and having already made it further than she ever thought possible. 

“I would see that as a challenging thing,” Thitikul said last year of trying to win a major. “Like, one challenge to do. I’m not saying it’s stressful because I know I’m still young and a lot of opportunities will come forward.

“I just answer myself if I’m not winning any major [until] I retire, if I’m going to be regret or I’m going to be sad about that, and I would say I’m not. I’m thinking all the things that I have been doing out here on the tour, [if] I have done enough, and then I give it all 100 percent, and I just let it be more natural. If I get it, I’ll get it. If not, it’s just more things to do, more than life, more than golf.”

Time and scars have a way of changing things. 

No one is immune to the weight of major pressure, and, as time passes and the goal remains elusive, things can change.

After a summer in which she was bested by Lee in Frisco and failed to put away Kim at the Evian, Thitikul arrives at this year’s Chevron Championship understanding the increased stakes the longer her majorless streak drones on. She’s still approaching it the same, but understands the weight will increase if she continues to come up short. That her accomplishments are unimpeachable, but majors are different, no matter what you tell yourself.

“Every time I lost in a major, for sure, people remind every week,” Thitikul said, laughing, on Tuesday at Memorial Park in Houston. “Obviously, I think it’s just the challenge of my career. I know what I have [under my] belt right now at this [age]. I think I accomplish a lot, but obviously [majors are] the one that I feel like the first time is always the hardest.

“And then if I can prove to myself that I can be able to do that, I think it’s just — that’s what golf is.” 

Thitikul has already shown that she can overcome obstacles and bounce back from heartbreak — that she can endure pain and use it as fuel to climb.

Last season, after she four-putted on the 72nd hole to lose the Kroger Championship, Thitikul, the grounded World No. 1, went home to Dallas and cried her eyes out. She took a photo of her swollen face to remind her of the ups and downs of the life she chose. There will be highs, but they don’t come without the lows. A few weeks later, Thitikul flushed that loss by authoring a historic comeback in Shanghai. After that win, she showed a different side of herself. She showed the tears of a world-beating talent with a fire to be great — one who wants to win and make the most of a rare gift.

“I just kept [telling] myself whatever [happens] in dramatic events, not just Cincinnati, but in this year, I just told myself that I need to earn it by myself,” Thitikul said in Shanghai. “The winner is just only one player and then I have to earn it by myself, and then when it’s my time, I will want to be in that moment again and did it by myself again. I’ve got nothing to be scared of anymore.”

Jeeno Thitikul hopes to find herself in that moment again this week. She’ll tell you that putting yourself in contention, as she has, means it’s only a matter of time before things break your way — before the golf gods rule in your favor and you prove to yourself that you’re made for the moments you always dreamed you were.