Stray Shots: Windfalls and breakouts
Thitikul outearns Korda, Maverick McMagic, closed shops and sad losses
Jeeno Thitikul won one trophy and one very big check in 2024 (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
It’s Thanksgiving week in America. The PGA Tour season is over. So is the LPGA’s … and Korn Ferry’s … and geezers’ … and LIV’s … and even the European circuit has ended one season and started another on the other side of the world without so much as a week off to digest the big meal of 2024.
Here at Daily Drive, it’s time to breath a little bit and dial back the weekday posts unless some newsy morsel comes along like: Tiger talking at the Hero (he said Monday that he will be not be playing next week’s event in the Bahamas after another back surgery in September) or maybe even playing from a cart with his son, Charlie; a deal is struck with PIF; or we just feel like counting down a little more to the Masters (it’s 135 days for those counting at home); or whatever feels worth writing something about. Point is, Daily Drive won’t be cluttering anyone’s inbox every single weekday until the 2025 PGA Tour season kicks off in January as we enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hannukah and New Year’s and football playoffs and all the rest of the trimmings this time of year brings.
That said, here’s a low-key Stray Shots to set the Thanksgiving table …
By Peter Kaufman
Stray Shots while wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving …
1. Income inequality. Nelly Korda won seven times on the LPGA Tour this year and earned $4.3 million. Jeeno Thitikul won just once — Sunday — and with her women’s sports record $4 million paycheck and a $1 million AON Risk Reward Challenge bonus, she pocketed more in one week than Korda’s historic season was worth financially. All in all, Thitikul earned more than $6 million on the year. Timing in life can be close to everything.
By the way, Thitikul’s haul is the highest ever in women’s golf, surpassing Lorena Ochoa’s 2007 season when she took home $4.37 million — a reminder of just how dominant Ochoa was, with that record lasting 17 years.
2. Maverick McNealy. Our readers know how highly Stray Shots regards Maverick’s talent and his future. A star from Stanford (Management Science and Engineering class of 2018), he has been hungry to win since turning pro in 2017 and he finally broke through on Sunday in Sea Island, Ga., with a birdie on the last hole of the RSM Classic. While his hunger is not borne of economics (he is from a highly privileged background), it’s no less admirable — and perhaps even more so — to see how he burns to succeed.
It’s worth keeping a sharp eye on him in 2025, please, to see where he can go now.
3. Career opportunities. From whence did Luke Clanton come? Wow. An amateur and still a junior at Florida State, all he has done since June is make the cut in seven of his eight PGA Tour starts, finishing top-10 four times and runner-up twice including Sunday on the Seaside Course at Sea Island. (His first second-place came at the John Deere Classic.)
Stray Shots is less interested in genuflecting to Clanton’s ahead-of-schedule talent than it is in the likelihood that he’s more the exception than the rule.
Meaning that as the PGA Tour tightens down the number of exempt players, there are going to be fewer chances for the young Clantons of the world to make their way to the Show. It must be noted, however, that Clanton is within arm’s reach of a full card in the big leagues via the the PGA Tour University Accelerated program, which along with its system for rewarding status to collegiate seniors has paved the way for talents like Ludvig Åberg, Michael Thorbjorsen, Gordon Sargent and (likely soon) Clanton and Auburn’s rising sophomore sensation Jackson Koivun to fast track to stardom.
On Sunday, however, Kevin Kisner made some comments that the PGA Tour is looking more and more like a “closed shop” due to some of the reduced eligibility changes approved to take effect in 2026.
Now, his context was that you may not see some formerly great players who lost their card this year be able to come back to the PGA Tour. But Stray Shots is more concerned about what it will mean to the fans if young talent is unable to crack the starting line-up. It’s almost like the fans don’t know what they won’t know. Which is a shame. At a time when the tour needs all the good stories and fan experiences it can muster, making it more difficult for young talent that doesn’t earn golden PGA Tour U tickets to break through cannot be a positive.
4. Tony Manero. The surprise winner of the 1936 U.S. Open and a member of the Manero restaurant family was the subject of a piece I wrote for Sports Illustrated last year that published during Thanksgiving week due to the confluence here of golf and good food.
A somber note: one of the sources for the article, and in fact the genesis of it, was Mark Costaregni, a member of the Manero clan. Costaregni passed away in August, far too early at age 61, after a tough cancer battle. He was an esteemed teaching professional, terrific player, wonderful family man and great friend.