Just don’t ask her to say so.
“I don’t think I’m good,” Thitikul said the day before this tournament began, telling the story of a conversation she had about her new ranking. “It’s just a number-wise that the golf, the ranking, the stats, they just build it up, but I just said to the media guy that walked up with me today and asked me about it: I don’t think I’m that good.”
Suddenly, every weekend duffer and frustrated amateur golfer has a new hero. Turns out that even for the pros, this sport is hard.
And maddening.
And frustrating.
And fantastic.
Across the sun-splashed weekend of golf at TPC Boston, where local favorites like Megan Khang drew large crowds and fought her putter, longtime favorites like Lexi Thompson signed autographs and dug deep to find momentum, and national favorites like Korda rode the roller coaster from tee to green and cut line to contention, a simple, abiding truth connected them all.
Golf is hard.
As takeaways go, this is neither new nor particularly profound. But after days of watching these talented, seasoned professionals hit a green only to have the ball spin perilously far from the hole, or land a perfect tee shot only to see it fall a divot so deep the ensuing shot is compromised … well, it’s a reminder of why golf can be awful.
But also addicting.
And amazing.
Former world No. 1 Nelly Korda slipped down the leaderboard with a 75 on Sunday, her highest score at a non-major since April.Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
Even for those of us (raise hand) who don’t play, but might have married someone who does (raise other hand), or regularly get to cover those who play for a living (me again), it’s obvious that golf can be cruel. So why do we stick with it? Because it can be magic, with moments like the hole in one that Ariya Jutanugarn made on the 16th hole Sunday, or the final, tournament-winning putt the rookie Wang holed, that roar back and pull us in.
“It’s a perfectionist sport that you can’t be perfect at,” said Khang, the Rockland native who spent another year as the FM’s official and unofficial golf ambassador, touting all that is great about Massachusetts golf while also visiting with family, hosting friends, educating fellow golfers on best places to eat, and oh, competing in the tournament. While she fulfilled the promise to herself to score better than last year, the rest of the field was pushing the boundaries farther too, and her 9 under was good enough for a four-way tie for 24th.
“I felt like I played well, but I think some of the girls are playing a little different course than I am,” she said with a laugh, thinking of the likes of Jin Hee Im, whose tournament record 62 Sunday moved her from a 12-way tie for 37th to T5.
But Khang made a great point about the game that is also her vocation. There is no individual opponent standing across from you, no one playing defense. Just you and your club.
“At the end of the day it’s whoever plays the golf course the best,” she said. “In tennis, you’re literally going against one other person, and then you kind of win or lose that match and play a new person. Whereas in golf, it’s the same holes, same yardages, same stuff like that. It’s just truly whoever manages themselves on the golf course better, holes more putts, and there is nothing you can be upset about.”
No thing. Just someone.
“I love the fact that golf just kind of falls directly on you, and if you’re going to be upset with something you have to look in the mirror,” she said. “To me, golf reflects a lot about life. It’s trying to take the negatives of, let’s say, a bad shot, and trying to make it positive.”
Take her relationship with TPC Boston’s seventh hole, which confounded Khang for three straight days.
“I finally hit the middle of the fairway [Sunday] and then I found the middle of the cross bunker. I’m looking at my caddie going, ‘What in the world am I doing in this spot?’ Like it couldn’t have been an easier quote-unquote second shot, and now I have a 196-yard bunker shot where I can’t see the pin.”
Golf plans, God laughs.
“I ended up birdieing it,” Khang laughed. “It’s stuff like that. He’s telling me, ‘Hey, it’s fine, you can do this,’ and then it’s playing a little game with myself of, ‘OK, how good can Megan Khang be out of this? How can I get out of these?’
“I love the fact that the sport constantly challenges me.”
It was Rose Zhang who told me after her marathon Saturday, when she finished the final 14 holes of Round 2 and then completed all 18 of Round 3 to put herself in the final pairing, “You know the game of golf is not very easy, but a lot of these players out here make it look easy. It’s our livelihood. But I think sometimes you really just have to take a step back and take in the positives. At the end of the day, everyone thinks about only the end result. There’s only one winner in every tournament. You can’t completely think about the results and base your entire life on that.”
Remember that when you need your next mulligan, flub your next tee shot, or miss your next gimme putt. Golf is hard, even for the best in the world.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her @Globe_Tara.
