- Thitikul sweeps remaining season-ending honors following the CME Group Tour Championship
The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) announced today that Jeeno Thitikul earned the 2025 Rolex Player of the Year award and the Vare Trophy following the final round of the LPGA’s season-ending event, the CME Group Tour Championship. She received her awards during Sunday’s trophy ceremony on the 18th green at Tiburon Golf Club.
Going into the final event of the season, the Rolex Player of the Year race came down to Thitikul and 2025 Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year winner Miyu Yamashita. Trailing Thitikul by 16 points, Yamashita needed to win the CME Group Tour Championship to clinch her second season-ending award, but ultimately finished tied for 36th.
Thitikul is just the second player from Thailand to earn the prestigious Rolex Player of the Year award since it was introduced in 1966 and the first since Ariya Jutanugarn won the award for the second time in 2018. She becomes the first player since Lydia Ko in 2022 to win the Rolex Player of the Year Award and the Vare Trophy in the same season.
Entering the CME Group Tour Championship, the Vare Trophy was down to four players: Thitikul, with an average of 68.877; Nelly Korda, with an average of 69.582; Minjee Lee, with an average of 69.671; and Yamashita, with an average of 69.802. Thitikul won the 2025 Vare Trophy by recording the season’s lowest scoring average of 68.681 and meeting the award’s minimum-round requirements. It is her second Vare Trophy after finishing with a scoring average of 69.53 in 2023. Thitikul became the 16th player to win the award in different seasons. Thitikul’s 68.681 sets a new LPGA Tour single-season scoring average record, besting Annika Sorenstam’s 2002 scoring average of 68.696. She is just the third player in LPGA Tour history to win the Vare Trophy with a sub-69 scoring average, joining Sorenstam in 2002 and Ko in 2022.
Thitikul’s 2025 season was nothing short of dominant, finishing inside the top 10 in 14 of her 20 starts. In a season that saw 29 different winners, Thitikul was one of two players to win multiple times with her wins at the Mizuho Americas Open and the Buick LPGA Shanghai. She finished inside the top five in four of her last five starts and missed just one cut at the U.S. Women’s Open presented by Ally. She led the Tour in multiple statistical categories and reclaimed the No. 1 spot in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings in August.
In her fourth season on the LPGA Tour, Thitikul has now earned five season-ending awards: 2022 Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year; 2023 and 2025 Vare Trophy; 2024 Aon Risk Reward Challenge; and 2025 Rolex Player of the Year. The 22-year-old has seven career victories, including the 2024 and 2025 CME Group Tour Championships. She broke Lorena Ochoa’s single-season earning record in 2024 with a season total of $6,059,309. She has represented her home country of Thailand multiple times including at the 2023 and 2025 Hanwha LIFEPLUS International Crown and at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Thitikul also competes on the Ladies European Tour (LET) and has four career victories. In 2021, she became the youngest ever Order of Merit winner on the LET and just the fourth player to win both Rookie of the Year and Order of Merit titles in the same season.
The prestigious Rolex Player of the Year award was introduced to the LPGA in 1966, and each year, the recipient earns one point toward the LPGA Hall of Fame. LPGA Tour players are awarded points at each official LPGA tournament based on top-10 finishes with the top points earner for the season taking home the honor each year. Points are doubled at each of the LPGA Tour’s five major championships – The Chevron Championship, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, the U.S. Women’s Open, the Amundi Evian Championship and the AIG Women’s Open.
The Vare Trophy was introduced to the LPGA by Betty Jameson in 1952, in honor of the great American player Glenna Collett Vare. Vare Trophy scoring averages are computed on the basis of a Member’s total yearly score in Official Tournaments divided by the number of official rounds she played during a season.
