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Opinion
Jeeno Thitikul just won her 10th LPGA title at 23 years old, demolishing the field at the Portland Classic - and the sporting world barely looked up from its phone. That tells you everything about how women's golf is valued.
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Imagine a 23-year-old footballer winning ten major trophies. They would be on every billboard from Bangkok to Birmingham. They would have a Netflix documentary, a fragrance line, and a permanent seat on the sofa of every chat show in the western world.
Jeeno Thitikul has ten LPGA titles. She just obliterated a field in Portland, finishing at 22 under par - a margin so absurd it barely qualifies as a contest. And the average sports fan could not pick her out of a lineup.
Let the numbers breathe for a second. Sophia Schubert and Arpichaya Yubol shared the lead heading into Sunday. Thitikul sat two shots back in third. By the time she was done, neither leader was in the same postcode.
Schubert, ranked 295th in the world, is fighting just to keep her tour card. Yubol has two runner-up finishes this season and still cannot close. Narin An lurked at 13 under after a brilliant third-round 66 - and was swallowed whole.
Thitikul did not edge past these players. She destroyed them. That is not a close tournament decided on the 72nd hole. That is a predator toying with its food.
Here is the uncomfortable truth nobody at LPGA headquarters wants to confront. Women's golf does not have a visibility problem because it lacks talent. It has a visibility problem because the sport's power brokers have never truly committed to selling its best players.
Thitikul is box office. She is young, dominant, and ruthlessly consistent. She should be the face of global golf sponsorship. Instead, she pockets $300,000 for a week's work that would earn a middling PGA Tour player three times that for finishing tenth.
Yes, prize money is rising. Yes, the LPGA has made strides. But ten titles by 23 years old deserves more than a polite press release and a Monday-morning highlights reel buried beneath footage of some bloke missing a cut at a Korn Ferry event.
I accept that the LPGA's global calendar is complex. I accept that building a sporting brand takes time. And I accept that Thitikul herself may not crave the spotlight in the way western media demands.
None of that excuses the collective shrug.
Everyone is banging on about Europe's rookie picks and whether Charley Hull can hold a putter under pressure. Meanwhile, the most dominant force in women's golf just racked up title number ten with the casual efficiency of someone returning a library book.
If Thitikul were American, she would be on cereal boxes. If she were European, she would be Dame Jeeno by Christmas. Instead, she is Thai, she is quiet, and she is being criminally ignored.
Ten titles. Twenty-three years old. Somebody, somewhere, should be paying attention.
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Copyright 2026 VIASPORT
Eva Hernández, Editor-in-Chief
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