There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with becoming exceptional before you are old enough to understand what excellence costs. Lydia Ko and Jeeno Thitikul know this better than almost anyone.
Ko was 17 when she became the youngest player in the history of professional golf—male or female—to reach world No 1. Thitikul was 14 when she became the youngest woman to win a professional golf tournament, and 19 when she claimed the top ranking herself. By any measure, both women arrived at the pinnacle of their sport at an age when most of their peers were still finding their footing. The question was never whether they could reach the top. It was whether they could stay there—and, more importantly, who they would become in the trying.
Speaking at a recent roundtable hosted by Rolex, the two Testimonees offered a rare and candid window into the inner lives behind the highlight reels. What emerged was a portrait not just of two champion golfers, but of two women who have learnt, through hardship, that the pursuit of excellence is about far more than results.
Rolex’s relationship with women’s golf stretches back to 1980, when the Swiss watchmaker became Official Timekeeper of the LPGA Tour—a partnership rooted in mutual respect and a commitment to excellence that has only deepened over the decades. Today, Rolex stands as a major partner of all five women’s major championships, including The Amundi Evian Championship, with which it has been associated for more than 25 years.
It is a legacy that both Ko and Thitikul speak about with genuine warmth. For Ko, who joined the Rolex family of Testimonees in 2014, the relationship represents continuity—a constant thread running through a career that has spanned remarkable highs and, as she freely admits, some very difficult lows. “Rolex is the longest partner that I have had in my career,” she says. “It’s great to be able to represent a brand that truly believes in not just the present, but also the growth of where the game is heading.”
For Thitikul, who joined the Rolex family in 2023, the honour carried a historic dimension. She became the first athlete from Thailand to be welcomed as a Rolex Testimonee—a milestone she places in the broader context of the legends who came before her. “It was such an honour,” she says. “It has been a pleasure to join some of the legends of the game like Annika Sörenstam and Jack Nicklaus. It is very special to be on the same team as them in the Rolex family.”
Success at a young age is a gift that carries its own complications. “The better you play, the [higher the] expectations from yourself and especially around you—all the fans, all the team—is always going to be there,” says Thitikul. “It’s something we must face. Sometimes you just need to fall first. You fall to the pressure, you fall to expectations, you fall to the perfectionist you want to be on the course, and then you learn, you grow, and then you can answer yourself.”
It is a remarkably mature philosophy from a player still in her early twenties. But it did not come easily. For Thitikul, 2023 was a year that tested the foundations of everything she had built. After a sensational rookie season on the LPGA Tour in 2022—one in which she won twice and claimed the Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year award—the pressure of sustaining that level began to close in. She found herself fixated on results, unable to separate her sense of self-worth from the scoreboard. “I was not happy with a top five,” she admits. “I was really strict with the result more than the process.”
The breaking point came at the Scottish Open, where she shot a first-round 10-over-par and did something she had never done before in her life: she withdrew. “I told my coach, ‘I don’t want to play anymore,’” she recalls. “I feel like I am putting in the same effort, but why am I not seeing the result?” It was a moment of profound vulnerability—but also, in retrospect, a turning point.
Ko’s 2023 was equally bruising—by her own reckoning, the worst season of her 13-year professional career. Coming off a 2022 in which she had reclaimed LPGA Player of the Year honours for the first time since 2015, the fall felt all the more vertiginous. She missed the cut at the AIG Women’s Open; she finished last among those who made the cut at the Canadian Women’s Open—a “one ball” round she describes as genuinely embarrassing; then she missed another cut in Portland.
“I remember having a conversation on Friday evening with my sister while having Thai food, crying because I really didn’t know what was next for me,” Ko says, with the frankness that has always characterised her public manner. “I felt like I was putting in the same amount of effort or even trying more, yet the return was nothing. It was hard because when you keep putting in and you just keep getting pushed down and down, it’s really hard to see the vision.”
She never qualified for the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship that year. But something stirred late in the season—a partnership with fellow Rolex Testimonee Jason Day at the Grant Thornton Invitational, which they won together. It was, Ko says, “a little spark of hope.” That spark became a flame in 2024, culminating in one of the most emotional moments of her career: a gold medal at the Paris Olympics. But Ko is careful about how she frames that achievement. The pride she felt coming down the 18th hole, she insists, had less to do with the medal than with something harder to quantify. “I’m just so proud of myself for overcoming my own doubts,” she says. “It was the first time in my career that I felt like I truly persevered.”
For Thitikul, the reset she needed came in the form of an injury in late 2023 that kept her off the course for three months—the longest stretch she had ever gone without touching a golf club. It was, in the moment, devastating. She watched tournaments from the sidelines and wept in her doctor’s office, asking when she could play again. But when she returned, something fundamental had shifted. “I realised I’m not going to play for a win anymore,” she says. “I just want to play golf.” The experience taught her gratitude—for her health, for the simple ability to compete. “I care for myself and how healthy I am and how the process is, and all the love around me.”
Running through both women’s reflections is a common thread: the necessity of playing for yourself, not for others. “I prove not just to other people, but especially to myself that I belong here,” says Thitikul. “I did all this for myself, not for others.” Ko, after years of feeling like a disappointment during her slump, arrived at a similar clarity at the Paris Olympics. “I definitely don’t need to prove anything to myself,” she says. “If last week was my last event, I’ve still had a great career. All I can do is really just keep going higher.”
There is something quietly fitting about both women being associated with Rolex—a brand whose identity is built around excellence that endures not in a single moment, but over years, shaped as much by setbacks as by triumphs.
Ko and Thitikul are, on the surface, different players—one a New Zealander of Korean heritage whose career arc spans more than a decade of professional golf; the other a Thai prodigy still in the early chapters of what promises to be an extraordinary story. But they share a hard-won wisdom about what it takes to sustain greatness: the humility to fall, the courage to rise, and the clarity to remember why you fell in love with the game in the first place. As Thitikul puts it: “You’re not playing golf for the win, but you’re playing golf because you love the game and you love the competition.”
That, perhaps, is what separates the great ones from the merely talented. And it is a lesson that no leaderboard can fully capture.
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