Sahith Theegala Wins His First U.S. PGA Golf Title
September 17, 2023
Sahith Theegala won the Fortinet Championship today at the Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa Valley, California. “I loved the cheering…they had my back. I hope they know I have their back too,” Theegala told NBC Sports after his first win on the United States Professional Golf Association (PGA) tour.
Theegala was referring to the loud cheering he gets at tournaments from a group of fans, which include relatives and friends, led by his father Murali (Muralidhar) Theegala, mother Karuna Theegala and his girlfriend Juju (Julianna) Chan. Murali got 35 extra tickets for today’s final round for Theegala fans, including from their home area in Orange County, Southern California. Chan, who met Theegala while they were students at Pepperdine in 2017, is a competitive swimmer.
During today’s final round, Theegala scored four under par to win the tournament, two strokes ahead of S.H. Kim of South Korea. Theegala led the tournament since the second day. Several top ranked players, including Max Homa, ranked 7th in the world, and Justin Thomas, ranked 24th in the world, both from the United States, were competing in the Fortinet Championship.
For the first two rounds, Theegala played with fellow Indian American Akshay Bhatia. Ranked 105th in the world, Bhatia won his first PGA tour title in July.
The Fortinet Championship was Theegala’s 74th start on the PGA Tour. Since being admitted to the tour in 2022, he has finished second twice, third place once and was among the top ten 13 times. He qualified for the PGA tour, the top golf competition in the U.S. and the world, after he finished among the leaders of lower-level tours, .
With a height of 6 feet 3 inches and 200 pounds in weight, Theegala’s drives average around 300 yards. . His favorite professional golfers include Tiger Woods, Henrik Stenson, and Tony Finau. He likes golf because “the mental toughness needed to play this sport at a high level is unbelievable and it requires your attention all the time,” he told PepperdineWaves.com. “Although it may not necessarily require the most physical ability, it is by far the hardest sport I have ever played.”
Prior to today’s win, Theegala was ranked 37th in the world. To date, he has earned $9 million in prize money on the PGA Tour; today’s win brings him an additional $1.5 million. Also, he earns fees from sponsors for wearing their logos on his clothing, including from golf equipment maker PING displayed on his cap.
Sahith Reddy Theegala is a rare non-White player on the PGA Tour as well as a rare Indian American to achieve major success in sports.
In 1987, his father moved to the United States from Hyderabad, India, to attend graduate school. The family traveled to India at least once every two years. Theegala’s favorite food is rice and curry. In 2001, while his mother battled thyroid cancer, his maternal grandmother Vijaya Laxmi moved to U.S. to help raise Sahith and his brother.
Theegala grew up playing golf on the local municipal courses in Orange County, California. While the fees are low for county residents - about $30 for a round currently - very few of these courses are challenging and most are not well-maintained. The garage in his home had a poster stating: Here lives the world’s gfreatest golfer.
Once, when he was ten, his father took him to practice on the greens of a private club in the Los Angeles suburbs. A man walked up to them and said “You’re not supposed to be here,” his father told The New York Times.
“My dad even though he never plays golf…he’s the one that taught me the game pretty much,” Theegala told PGATOUR.com. “We weren’t in the greatest financial situation when I was a kid” being lower middle class. “And it was different because we had no experience with sports at all, so (my father) spearheaded the whole mission to college and professional golf…He put everything that he could into me. My mom, too, sacrificed so much for me, but my dad’s definitely the reason I’m playing professional golf today.” His parents spent their savings on buying him clubs, paying course fees, travel costs and other golf expenses.
In 2015, Theegala graduated from Diamond Bar High School in California as an honors student, while also winning several golf awards. “I’d say I was a pretty good junior golfer,” he told PGATOUR.com, though not good enough to be actively recruited by Pepperdine in California, ranked among the top ten in men’s golf among U.S. universities. “But at Pepperdine, I went from average to slightly good to what I felt like was ready to be a decent professional golfer,” adds Theegala.
In four playing seasons over five years at Pepperdine, he ended with the best scoring average in the University’s history. In 2019, he was unable to play golf for ten months due to a wrist injury. The next year, more focused and fired up, he won the Haskins Award and the Ben Hogan Award for the best player in U.S. men’s college golf. Theegala credits Michael Beard, the head golf coach at Pepperdine, for his transformation into a golf professional. He majored in sports administration at the university.
“I’m an introvert by nature,” Theegala told The New York Times. “When I’m in the act of playing golf, I don’t even think about the people watching.”
Besides golf, Theegala enjoys playing basketball, chess as well as smaller video games like Among Us on his personal computer, not on consoles. He is a fan of The Ranger’s Apprentice series book; The Spongebob Movie; the TV shows American Ninja Warrior and The Queen’s Gambit; and musicians RL Grime and Flume.
Now, since he has won a PGA tournament, Theegala could buy “nice” cars for his parents and himself - if he has not already done so - as he told an interviewer for the PGATOUR.com. The nicest car the family had, when he was growing up, was a Volkswagen Passat, which his parents gave him when turned 16.
In 2022, during the WM Phoenix Open in Arizona, he was leading in the fourth and final round of the tournament with only two of the 18 holes left to play. Then on the 17th hole, he hit a tee shot that rolled into the water.
Theegala finished tied for third place.
At the press conference, following the end of his final round at the Phoenix Open, Theegala broke into tears when asked his reaction to the loss. Wiping off tears, he added that the support he got from fans “means a lot to me.” He also cried on his mother’s shoulder.
His father Murali told a TV interviewer that the loss was part of Theegala’s growth and that “he is learning now…he will do well.”
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