If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Jeeno Thitikul did exactly that. After coming in second the past two years, the 21-year-old LPGA star won the 2024 Aon Risk Reward Challenge and the $1 million prize that comes with it.
The Aon Risk Reward Challenge is a season-long competition that highlights golf’s best strategic decision-makers. To qualify, players must play a minimum of 40 rounds throughout the season.
“It feels really amazing to get this done and also I really feel amazing for high competition level with Aon, as well,” Thitikul said. “It’s really challenging thought, each hole that we had at every tournament.”
This year, Thitikul broke through because of her stellar decision-making with an impressive +0.39 strokes gained on every Challenge hole played and a go-for-green success rate of 35 percent, a figure that places her second overall among the 147 Challenge participants this season.
“That’s all my plan, that I’m trying to — especially reachable par-5s, par-4s that Aon have been setting, that’s all the plan for me and my coach, trying to play all the par-5s, we’re trying to make birdies,” Thitikul said, “if we can all day long, which really suits the Aon setup, rules kind of thing like that, which is really helping me with all the holes or all the rounds that I have to take advantage of it.”
Thitikul won the Vare Trophy in 2023 on the heels of winning LPGA Rookie of the Year honors in 2022.
She won the Dow Championship with teammate Ruoning Yin and had 11 top-10 finishes, including a streak of six straight.