Teeing it up for the first time at the LPGA MEDIHEAL championship, 2022 rookie Atthaya Thitikul got off to a hot start on Thursday, shooting her fourth consecutive first-round score of 67 or lower. The Thai golfer recently moved to No. 2 on the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings after her fourth-place finish at last week’s The Ascendant LPGA benefiting Volunteers of America. She would be projected to move to World No. 1 with, and only with, a win at MEDIHEAL. Victory at The Saticoy Club won’t be easy though, she said, given the hilly course and slopping greens. Luckily, the 19-year-old is up to the challenge, having adapted her game to a variety of different courses around the world to earn 12 top-10 finishes on the LPGA Tour this season.
“I am the one who like the challenging like course. I do like the challenging things in golf,” said Thitikul, who shot a 5-under 67 at Saticoy. “I mean, when challenge come to you it's mean like it's another test. It's another, you know, like experience that you going to get. And then if you play in challenging course then you know how is your game is, how your short game is.”
Thitikul’s short game was the key to her success on Thursday, especially on the challenging greens. She needed only 26 putts to finish the round, during which she hit 13 of 18 greens and nine of 14 fairways. Her putting has been a particular strength of late, as according to KMPG Performance Insights, Thitikul has made 48 putts this season of 20 feet or longer, and only three players have made more putts of that length so far in 2022.
“Today I just give all my credit to my putter because it's work really well today... I mean, at first I didn't hit it that well, but I think my putter, it's work really good,” she said. “Actually, I think because like we play -- we started pretty early today, pretty early, and then no sun coming out in the morning. So we have to calculate the number. All the irons pretty -- like we have to be careful about that, because the green, it's pretty hard here because like it's so slopey. And then you couldn't leave it short or long because like you leave it short you going to run out like backward.”
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