A decade ago, Thailand native KK Limbhasut came to America with his father, four suitcases and no real plan â other than wanting to play professional golf.
Limbhasut (the Ks stand for Khem Khon) was 14 when he touched down in Los Angeles not knowing what was next. He and his father, who had introduced him to the game five years earlier, were planning to go to San Diego but ended up in Loma Linda â about 90 minutes east of Los Angelesâ international airport. There, a family friend helped them to move in and get settled.
At 14, he was away from his mom and sister, and looking back now, he admits it was tough. But he came with a dream, and itâs now very nearly fulfilled.
Limbhasut started the 2020-21 Korn Ferry Tour season with just conditional status, but after a T12 result at the El Bosque Mexico Championship by INNOVA, followed three months later by a T10 at the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass, he has bolstered his position in the reshuffle entering a busy summer stretch of the schedule.
âIâm just really glad to be back and playing full time,â said Limbhasut after the approximately three-month pandemic hiatus.
Born in Bangkok, Limbhasut started playing golf as an 8-year-old, enjoying rounds with his family. He said his dad played a lot of golf, but it quickly became something his whole family would do.
âIf (my dad) was going to play golf by himself, heâd be gone for half a day. Instead of doing that, he would tell my mom and me to pick up the game and we could all play together,â said Limbhasut.
âThatâs how it all started.â
One day, Limbhasut recalled, he went to the course with his dad and played with a competitive junior golfer. It was the first time Limbhasut thought that someone else was really good and it was âcoolâ to play golf.
âThatâs why I wanted to play tournaments,â said Limbhasut, who was 9 at the time. Five years later he and his dad wanted to pursue both education and competitive golf together. That system, Limbhasut said, doesnât exist in his native Thailand.
Although he grew up around many of the other Thai names in professional golf these days âand Kiradech Aphibarnrat on the PGA TOUR, and the Jutanugarn sisters on the LPGA Tour (âShe is amazing,â said Limbhasut of Ariya Jutanugarn, former world No. 1) â there wasnât an opportunity for him to both get a great education and play golf at a high level. It was one or the other, he said.
He spent two summers playing golf tournaments in the U.S. before moving to California full-time, and Limbhasut said there was a culture shock when he first came to America. He went to a private international school in Thailand, so he learned English, but itâs not unlike how Spanish is taught in the U.S. â it would be rarely outside the classroom. He was among a class of 30 in Thailand, and at his public-school in California, he was one of approximately 700.
But he got adjusted, making friends on the golf course and tracking down some solid Thai restaurants. âIt took a while,â he jokes.
He was comfortable in California. When it came time to choose a college, he wanted to stay in the state and specifically join a Pac-12 school. That meant UCLA, USC and Cal-Berkeley were tops on his list. Limbhasut decided on Cal, where he met future TOUR winner â and fast friend â Collin Morikawa.
Morikawa, who has made 22 consecutive cuts including securing a victory to begin his PGA TOUR career as a pro, said their friendship grew when Limbhasut finished runner-up to him at the 2016 Sunnehanna Amateur.
âWeâve been super close for a while and we talk almost every day. We talk like heâs my brother,â said Morikawa. âItâs awesome to see players that are my age, who I know really well, play well on the Korn Ferry Tour and hopefully make their way out here.
âYou see the relationships guys (on the PGA TOUR) have and theyâre really close. And yeah, Iâve got a handful of friends out here but Iâm not as close with them as I am with KK.â
We’ve been super close for a while and we talk almost every day. We talk like he’s my brother.
Limbhasut said he and Morikawa â who majored in business together â learned a lot from one another. They kept pushing each other to be the best player in college they could be. They competed, Limbhasut said, in everything â not just golf. And they practiced together almost every day because they had the same class schedule.
Morikawa describes Limbhasut as âsuper consistent,â with a âdeadlyâ short game. The TOUR winner said he spent almost every day during their college tenure trying to learn from Limbhasut on his short game.
âThatâs where heâs going to score. When he has shorter courses and he can hit short irons, thatâs when heâll go really low,â said Morikawa. âBut heâs an awesome guy, just really mellow and a really nice guy.â
Donât be fooled by that nice-guy persona, though. Limbhasut wants to win, and he wants to get to Morikawaâs level. âWe kept pushing each other to be the best golfer in college as we could, and we both have done pretty good,â said Limbhasut. âHeâs on the PGA TOUR doing some pretty big stuff, but Iâm on the Korn Ferry Tour, which is not too far from where he is.â
And Limbhasut, despite coming to America full of unknowns, is now just one step away from achieving his ultimate goal: getting on the PGA TOUR and joining Morikawa.
As it turns out, the journey from Thailand to the TOUR isnât too far at all. – By Adam Stanley,