SPORTS
July 2, 2018
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 9
Asians in American sports w Asian Americans in world sports
Two top Thai LPGA stars are also sisters
By Mike Street
Special to The Asian Reporter
he Ladies Professional Golf Asso-
ciation (LPGA) has been domi-
nated by eastern golfers lately,
nearly all of them from South Korea. Then
in 2016, Ariya Jutanugarn burst onto the
scene, becoming the first Thai golfer of
either gender to reach the top of the world
golf rankings. After struggling last season,
Ariya now leads the 2018 Race to the CME
Globe, ahead of another Thai golfer: her
sister Moriya.
Moriya has actually been on the LPGA
tour longer than her younger sister Ariya,
having qualified for the tour as soon as she
was eligible in 2013. In her first season,
Moriya played in 24 events, registering a
fourth-place finish and five other top-20
finishes, earning the 2013 Rookie of the
Year award.
In the next several seasons, she
struggled to match that success. Unable to
finish higher than fourth in a tournament,
she still played well, matching her career
low score of 66 three times in 2015 and
ranking fourth in the LPGA in putting
average in 2016.
Moriya seemed to put it all together in
2017 when she registered another
fourth-place finish, and added two
second-place and two third-place finishes.
She had six more top-10 finishes for a total
of 11, almost twice as many as she’d
accumulated in the four previous seasons.
Moriya also earned more than $1.3 million
that year, slightly more than she’d made in
her entire career.
This season, Moriya is showing that
2017 was no fluke. She finally secured her
first win in April, at the HUGEL-JTBC LA
Open notching six more top-10 finishes in
her first 15 events of the season. That
victory made Moriya and Ariya only the
second pair of sisters — and the first of
Asian descent — to win on the LPGA. And
the win put Moriya in second place for the
Race to the CME Globe and fifth on the
Rolex Rankings.
Ariya, the player above Moriya in both
season-spanning leaderboards, has been
having an even better season — and career
— than her older sister. Ariya qualified
two years after Moriya did and got off to a
slower start, failing to win the 2015 Rookie
of the Year award after a good season of
four top-10 finishes.
But Ariya made up for lost time in 2016.
Photo/Amy Lemus/NurPhoto/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)
Photo/Jorge Lemus/NurPhoto/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)
T
In addition to achieving the top spot in the
world, she became the first Thai golfer to
win a major tournament when she won the
Women’s British Open. That season, she
also led the tour with five victories,
becoming just the second player ever to
win Rolex Player of the Year, Race to the
CME Globe, and the LPGA Official Money
Title in the same season.
Ariya started strong in 2017, with eight
top-10 finishes in her first 10 tourna-
ments, four of them in either second or
third place. A victory at the Manulife
LPGA Classic seemed to portend another
amazing season for her. Then an old
shoulder injury flared up, and Ariya
endured a horrible string of 13
tournaments in which she withdrew once,
failed to make the cut five times, and
finished inside the top 20 just once.
She righted the ship in time to win the
season-ending
CME
Group
Tour
Championship, but it wasn’t enough to
boost Ariya to the top of any of the season
leaderboards. She still finished in fifth in
the Rolex Rankings and ninth for the Race
to the CME Globe — the latter just one
spot behind sister Moriya.
This different level of play between the
sisters is consistent with a pattern
recognized by Lynn Marriott, one of the
performance coaches shared by the
Jutanugarns. Marriott said, “Ariya’s highs
are really high and her lows are really low
... [Moriya] is so different, not too high and
not too low, not as extreme.”
Malaysia to sell bling seized in ex-prime minister’s probe
Continued from page 4
into 1MDB that were stifled under
Najib’s rule, and barred Najib and his
wife from leaving the country.
Mahathir, previously prime minister
for 22 years until 2003, was spurred
out of retirement by the 1MDB
scandal. Anti-graft officials have said
Najib may face criminal charges soon.
Lim said allegations that surfaced
in 2015 that some $700 million from
1MDB was channeled into Najib’s
bank accounts were the “game
changer” that prompted Mahathir,
92, to work with former foes including
himself and others who were jailed
during Mahathir’s first stint as
leader.
“I said no one is so stupid to put
money into his own personal bank
account especially if you are dealing
with the prime minister. Who is
stupid to do that,” he said. “But when
we discovered that that is indeed the
truth, we were shocked beyond
belief.”
If Najib had won another term, Lim
said Malaysia would’ve plunged into
a “deeper black hole.”
“Imagine if they had won another
term, the glass would be empty,” he
said. “The glass half full will allow us
to rehabilitate our finances, to
recuperate so that we can be
reinvigorated to be a dynamic
economy.”
Lim, who recently revealed graft in
Rocket developed by Japan
startup in flames after liftoff
Continued from page 3
in 2005 by maverick entrepreneur
Takafumi Horie, founder of internet
service provider Livedoor, who was joined
by science journalists and other space fans
in an effort to develop a small, lightweight,
and low-cost rocket to send information
satellites into space.
some projects linked to 1MDB after
opening up access to files in the
Finance Ministry previously limited
only to a top few, said he believed
most of the mega scandals have been
uncovered.
But he said there are many “mini
1MDB” scandals on a smaller scale
that will be revealed over time.
Mahathir is expected to hand over
the baton to reformist leader Anwar
Ibrahim under an election pact after
they agreed to bury a two-decade
feud. Anwar’s wife, who is currently
the deputy prime minister, will step
down at the time, Lim said.
“It is a question of timing,” he said.
“We know who is the next prime
minister.”
TOP THAI STARS. Moriya Jutanugarn (top
photo) of Thailand tees off on the third hole at the
Meijer Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA)
Classic golf tournament at Blythefield Country Club
in Belmont, Michigan. In the bottom photo, Ariya
Jutanugarn of Thailand hits a ball from the 8th tee
at Blythefield Country Club. Sisters Moriya and
Ariya have both found success so far this season.
This season, both of them look like
they’re finally hitting their high points
together. Through 15 tournaments,
Moriya has seven top-10 finishes,
including the win at the LA Open, plus a
second- and a third-place finish. Ariya has
10 top-10 finishes over the same span,
seven of them in the top five, including the
top spot at the Kingsmill Championship
and her second major tournament win at
the U.S. Women’s Open.
For all their shared successes, the
sisters don’t like to compare themselves to
each other. After Moriya’s win, she said of
comparisons to her sister, “I have my own
way to do things and she has her own way.”
And Ariya agreed, saying, “We never
compare each other. We just know [we do]
our best and try our hardest.”
Even though Ariya has enjoyed more
success on the leaderboard, and despite
their protests, the sisters are having
similar statistical seasons in 2018. In
addition to the other leaderboards where
they’re currently rubbing elbows, the
sisters are first and second on the tour this
season in both birdies and top-10 finishes.
The Jutanugarns both have eight eagles,
tied for second place on the tour, while
Ariya is first in the official money rankings
and Moriya is third.
All kinds of sister records remain within
their reach, both this season and beyond. If
they can both stay hot this season, they
could become the first sisters ever to finish
in the Top 10 of the Rolex Rankings. And if
— or perhaps when — Moriya wins her
first major, the Jutanugarns would be the
first sisters to win LPGA majors.
At a time when Asian women are
dominating the LPGA, the laws of
probability might have predicted that two
of the best would be sisters. But statistics
could not have predicted how these two
competitors support each other, keeping
their competitiveness on the course
separate from their close relationship
away from it. The combination is just one
more reason Asian sports fans will be
watching women’s golf with more interest
than any other sport.
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