The LPGA’s all-time best scorer might turn a swing adjustment into even more birdies in 2026.
Last season was historic for Thai golfer Jeeno Thitikul. Besides reclaiming the No.1 spot in the Women’s World Ranking, she recorded the lowest scoring average in LPGA Tour history (68.68), eclipsing Annika Sorenstam’s mark (68.69) from 2002.
What can Thitikul do for an encore? Considering all the 23-year-old former LPGA Rookie of the Year accomplished last year without dominating off the tee, there’s optimism she can go lower. “I want her to gain more speed through the ball with the upper body,” says her swing coach of almost nine years, Kris Assawapimonporn, of the ASA Golf Academy in Bangkok. “Once she does that, she’ll be able to hit the ball further. When everything works perfectly and her upper body matches her lower body, she can carry the ball six or seven more yards off the tee.”
Those distance gains would have Thitikul – currently averaging 271.6 yards (248.3 metres) off the tee – inside the top 30 in driving distance on tour, helping her to attack more flags and giving her even more birdie opportunities.
To accomplish this, Thitikul will need to eliminate the right miss off the tee. Her tendency is to pull her hands and club down too much during the first part of the downswing, Assawapimonporn says. As a result, she doesn’t have enough room to swing the club down in front of her, causing her to extend her hips early (towards the ball) and leave the clubface open.
To fix this fault, known as early extension, they worked last season on keeping her pelvis back while she rotates, so she can clear her hips more efficiently on the downswing. However, she got so good at rotating her hips that “her upper body could no longer keep pace with them”, her coach says.
This year, the emphasis has been on getting her upper body to catch up and match her lower body in the downswing. The key, Assawapimonporn says, is getting her right arm to “extend earlier on the downswing so that it’s straighter at impact [above, sixth frame]”. At times, her trail arm stays bent for too long, he says, which causes the right shoulder to drop and the upper body to lag so far behind that the clubface can’t release.
The feeling Thitikul uses to help get that release is to feel like she’s hitting the front-left quadrant of the ball.
“You want to feel like you’re chopping the wood where the ball is,” he says. “That’s when you have the most extension and maximum speed at the ball. The right shoulder stays up, and the right arm extends even more.”
When Thitikul does that and stays tall, her upper body has an easier time keeping pace with her hips – providing more power to the strike.
Photograph by Matt Tennehill
