As a young girl growing up in Thailand, Patty Tavatanakit never had much time for golf.
“My dad used to drag me along but I wasn’t really into it,” she recalls of her early years trailing behind her father at his Bangkok club. “I didn’t see the appeal.”
It was only when, by chance, Tavatanakit happened to watch Tiger Woods win an event on television one day that she sat up and took notice.
More than their shared ethnicity — Woods’ mother Kutilda hails from Kanchanaburi in western Thailand and the 45-year-old 15-time major winner was and remains a superstar in the country — it was the buzz surrounding him.
“Just holding the trophy, the way he carried himself, people going crazy about the whole thing,” she says. “It looked fun to an eight-year-old girl. I was like ‘Oh my God, that looks so cool! I want to be like him one day.’ The next semester at school I started playing golf. It really changed my life.”
Thirteen years later, Tavatanakit is one of the hottest prospects in the women’s game. The 21-year-old won the first major of the season — and her first event on the LPGA — the ANA Inspiration, back in April. Today, she tees it up at the second, the US Women’s Open, at The Olympic Club, San Francisco.
Tavatanakit will be among the favourites. The UCLA graduate did not just win the ANA Inspiration, she overwhelmed Mission Hills Country Club in a fashion her idol would have been proud of back when he was a rookie a quarter of a century ago.
With an average driving distance of 323 yards over the four rounds, the 21-year-old provided ample evidence that the power hitting that so polarises the men’s game is alive and well on the LPGA tour as well.
Tavatanakit, who stands just 5ft5in, is one of the new breed. She is paired with two more bombers today in Brooke Henderson and Lexi Thompson and she is unapologetic about the impact they are having.
“I think it’s great,” she says. “We’re all trying to get better. It’s making women’s golf better than ever. You know what, the funny thing was before I turned pro, I told my UCLA coaches ‘I’m going to make a difference out there. Like, I don’t know how exactly. But I’m going to do it.’ And I already feel like I am, you know, making that impact. We’re like, ‘Hey, we can play this way too! Like, we can overpower the course. We can have all the elements [ the men’s game has].”
Tavatanakit’s speech is peppered with ‘likes’ and ‘you knows’, the result of living in California since the age of 17. Tavatanakit actually used to go to a British school in Bangkok, but switched to an American one “because I was scared of doing GCSEs and A-Levels”.
She says she felt instantly at home in California, having first visited at the age of 10 for the junior world championships in San Diego. She credits her time at UCLA with turning her into the woman she is today.
“I don’t mean this in a bad way but I kind of feel I grew up in the wrong country,” she says. “I’ve got a big personality. I had a really hot temper when I was younger. And it just doesn’t really fit well with the Thai culture - just how everything is really structured, conservative.
“Every summer, I would come here and I’d never want to go back. The more I came here, the more I felt I could express myself. And then coming to college, with the diversity that UCLA has, was like that last piece of the puzzle.”
Tavatanakit does credit her Thai upbringing with helping her mental strength though. Although not a practising Buddhist herself, she says the ‘zen’ aspect is something on which she has drawn. She meditated twice before her final round at ANA Inspiration.
“It’s something my parents had me do since I was young. And I never really liked it back then. Just because, you know, like, as a kid, you don’t want to be sitting there, closed eyes, for hours on end. But the older I get the more I can relate to it. I feel like my parents ingrained that part pretty good.”
Can she overwhelm the course this week? “I don’t know. We’ll see. Having that distance as a weapon, like you said, it’s an advantage… but you’ve got to use it wisely.” (the Telegraph)