RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. - As a 19-year-old LPGA rookie, it’s hard to ponder putting Ariya Jutanugarn in the discussion for comeback player of the year on the LPGA Tour.
But considering Ariya Jutanugarn’s 2013, a season full of thrills, promise and heartbreak, she’s certainly deserving of being in the discussion if her year continues to go like the way it’s going so far.
Take it back to 2013. Playing as a sponsor exemption in her home country as a 17-year-old at the Honda LPGA Thailand, Jutanugarn led by two shots entering the 18th hole on Sunday. It looked like a storybook ending for Jutanugarn – a casual victory stroll in front of her home fans. Instead, it turned into a mess. Jutanugarn pushed her drive in the right front bunker on the par-5 18th then dumped her approach into the right front bunker into an unplayable lie. She had to drop and hit her fourth over the green. She left that chip shot on the fringe and ran the putt three feet past. She needed to make the three footer for a double bogey to go into a playoff with Inbee Park. She didn’t.
A moment like that could have crushed her confidence. Instead, it fueled her. She finished in the top five each of the next four LPGA events she played that year on sponsor’s exemptions. Five events, five top-five finishes. Jutanugarn had all the makings of the next big thing on the LPGA Tour.
Unfortunately, the next time we’d see Jutanugarn on the LPGA Tour would be the last in 2013. In a practice round with her sister, Moriya who won LPGA Rookie of the Year in 2013, Ariya fell down an incline while chasing Moriya with a water bottle. She injured her shoulder and needed corrective surgery that put her on the shelf for eight months.
Ariya played 10 LPGA events in 2014 through sponsor’s exemptions and Monday qualifiers but didn’t seem to regain the form she’d once had with a 16th place finish her best in 2014. Whatever she’d once lost, she seemingly found in late 2014, though. She finished in a tie for third at the LPGA’s Final Qualifying School to gain her LPGA Tour card and has been lighting up the Tour ever since among one of the most promising rookie classes ever.
She lost in a playoff at the Pure Silk Bahamas LPGA Classic to fellow rookie Sei Young Kim and then finished in third the very next event at the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open. Now, here this week, she’s again in contention at the season’s first major after a 6-under-par 66 on Saturday. Even though she entered the day seven shots back of the lead, she’s essentially called her shot at this point.
“Before the third round of the tournament, I felt like I’m going to win this one,” she said.
Most importantly for Jutanugarn, she finally feels like she’s back to the player she was before the injury.
“It’s pretty much the same right now,” she said.
Jutanugarn’s been so good to start 2015 that through only a quarter of the season, she’s already got more than half of the Rolex Rookie of the Year points her sister had when she won in 2013.
It’s Moriya that she credits with helping to push her to get back to where she once was, and it’s Moriya that she said helped keep her head in it after a disappointing 73 in the second round.
“It’s very nice because like yesterday, I just complained everything,” Ariya said. “I shot 1-over, and she said, ‘keep focused, be patient,’ and that helped me a lot.”
Ariya also earned a dinner off her sister with her 7-under-par 65 on Saturday.
“She gave me a text before I’m going out, and she’s like, ‘Good luck, Mo!’” Moriya said. “So whoever lost today just pay the dinner, so I pay the dinner tonight since she’s 6-under. I was on the putting green when she made the turn, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s like 3-under already.’ But just something fun with my sister. That’s how we do it.”
She’ll happily pay for dinner, though, in exchange for the joy that comes from seeing her sister back at the top of her game – and women’s golf.
“It was a very hard time for her because she comes from like finishing top four every week, and then she falls, gets surgery and takes her I would say like one year, whole year, to get better.”
That wait led us to here, though, where Ariya sits in a tie for third – four shots back – and Moriya is just one shot back in a tie for sixth. Together they could become the first sister duo to finish in the top 10 in an LPGA event in 14 years, and only the third sister duo ever to finish in the top 10 in a major.
“It would be really cool, I think,” Moriya said. I mean, it’s already cool that we are both on Tour, but it would be really cool if we both got top 10 this week.”
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