Moriya Jutanugarn

A Bangkok junior with an international first

Moriya Jutanugarn was born in Bangkok on 28 July 1994, sixteen months before her younger sister Ariya. Golf became a shared family project rather than a separate pastime. The sisters practised, travelled and competed along parallel routes, eventually reaching the LPGA Tour together. That connection would become an important part of both careers, but Moriya established an international record of her own before either sister entered the professional game.

At fourteen, Moriya won the 2008 R&A Junior Open at Hesketh Golf Club in England. The mixed championship brings together national representatives aged sixteen and under, and she became its first female winner. Her total left her one stroke ahead of the leading boy, future major champion Jordan Spieth. The result was more than an age-group title: it placed a Thai girl at the top of an international field organised through golf’s national governing bodies and marked an early threshold for women in a competition open to both sexes.

Low amateur and U.S. Women’s Amateur finalist

Moriya’s strongest amateur season came in 2011. At the U.S. Women’s Open at The Broadmoor, she finished tied for thirty-second on ten-over-par 294 and earned low-amateur honours by six strokes. The distinction linked her junior results to an open championship field containing the leading professionals in women’s golf. It also gave her experience of completing four rounds under major-championship conditions before she had turned seventeen.

One month later she advanced through match play to the thirty-six-hole final of the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rhode Island Country Club. Ariya, already a U.S. Girls’ Junior champion, caddied for her after being eliminated earlier in the week. Moriya defeated NCAA champion Austin Ernst in the semifinal before defending champion Danielle Kang won the final 6 and 5. The runner-up finish, following her low-amateur result, confirmed that her rise was not limited to one scoring format or one week.

Her amateur record also included the 2009 Duke of York Young Champions Trophy and 2011 victories at the AJGA Heather Farr Classic and Scott Robertson Memorial. She won the 2012 South Atlantic Ladies Amateur, then chose the professional route. These results supplied the competitive base for LPGA qualifying rather than functioning as isolated junior highlights.

Qualifying success and Rookie of the Year

Moriya turned professional in 2012 and tied for first at the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament on her first attempt. That result earned membership for the 2013 season. She did not need a tour victory to make an immediate mark: steady results across the year brought the Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year award. She was the first player from Thailand to receive it.

The award introduced a defining feature of her professional career. Moriya’s progress often appeared through accumulated finishes rather than sudden domination. She kept her tour status, learned new courses and built a schedule across continents while Ariya’s later run of major titles and No. 1 ranking attracted more attention. Comparing the sisters is unavoidable because they played the same circuit, but it can obscure the difficulty of Moriya’s own achievement: sustaining an LPGA career from 2013 onward and repeatedly returning to contention without an early win.

At the 2017 Evian Championship, Moriya tied for third, her best finish in a major. The result showed that the long search for a first tour title did not mean she was absent from elite leaderboards. It also preceded the season in which consistency finally became victory.

The 156th start and a historic pair of sisters

Moriya entered the final round of the HUGEL-JTBC LA Open in April 2018 without an LPGA victory in 155 starts. At Wilshire Country Club, she closed with a three-under 68 and finished twelve under par, two strokes ahead of Inbee Park and Jin Young Ko. The win converted years of tour experience into a first title against two major champions and former or future world No. 1 players.

The victory also created a family distinction. Ariya had become Thailand’s first LPGA winner in 2016, so Moriya’s title made the Jutanugarns the second set of sisters to win on tour after Annika and Charlotta Sörenstam. The record was not simply a novelty: it reflected two independent careers developed through the same Bangkok household and sustained at the highest level of the women’s game.

Moriya returned to the U.S. Women’s Open leaderboard in 2020, tying for sixth at Champions Golf Club. Nine years had passed since she was the championship’s low amateur. The two results bookended a period in which she moved from junior prospect to established professional while retaining the ability to contend in the sport’s deepest events.

A 59 and a title shared with Ariya

The Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational gave the sisters a rare opportunity to compete as a formal team. The event alternated between foursomes and four-ball formats, requiring shared strategy as well as individual scoring. In July 2021, Moriya and Ariya began the final round two strokes behind and produced an eleven-under-par 59 in four-ball play. Their twenty-four-under total secured a three-stroke victory.

For Moriya, the result was a second LPGA title and the first won alongside the sister who had accompanied so much of her development. It was also different from her Los Angeles breakthrough: rather than confirming that each sister could win separately, the Dow title recorded what they could achieve through collaboration. The sisters later received the event’s 2025 Dow Impact Award for using golf to support communities in Thailand, extending that team identity beyond one tournament result.

Portland and the value of a durable career

Moriya’s next victory arrived at the Portland Classic in August 2024, six years after her first individual title. She entered the final round one stroke behind and shot a six-under 66, making seven birdies before her only bogey of the week came on the seventy-second hole. Her twenty-two-under-par total of 266 was two strokes better than the group sharing second place. It became her third LPGA title and her first individual win since Los Angeles.

The interval gave the victory its meaning. Elite golf careers are often summarised through winning streaks, yet tour survival is also measured by adapting through seasons when wins do not come. Moriya remained competitive long enough to turn a 2013 rookie season into a third title eleven years later. The LPGA listed three career victories, forty-eight top-ten finishes and about $7.7 million in official career earnings as of 3 October 2026.

Moriya’s place in Thai golf therefore reaches beyond being Ariya’s older sister. She was a mixed international junior champion, a U.S. Women’s Open low amateur, a U.S. Women’s Amateur finalist, Thailand’s first LPGA Rookie of the Year and a winner in individual and team formats. Together, those stages describe persistence as clearly as breakthrough: a career built by remaining present, competitive and capable of winning across more than a decade on tour.