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Kiradech Aphibarnrat is a great golfer and his life story is interesting. With the goal of succeeding in golf, he came to a completely new environment not knowing the language, but the motive for success was stronger than anything else.
However, all this left consequences for him: "I'm telling you that I've been struggling for quite a while now. For me, my back is against the wall, so I don't have anything to lose anymore and I think the difficult and tough thing for me is to be the only Thai player on the Pga Tour.
I don't have any friends, I mean Thai friends, so we keep speaking English and not in my language."- he said, as quoted by golfmonthly.com Family and friends are what he misses and that is the main problem in the whole story.
"To be honest I feel a little bit lonely and homesick sometimes. My family isn't here, I'm lucky that I've got my Thai caddie to fly in for the last three weeks so I can communicate in Thai, which I feel more comfortable with.
I'm looking forward to seeing some new generation come over and play the Korn Ferry Tour event. I hope they are doing hard work and you know, one day, I hope to have some friends on Tour."
Aphibarnrat and his new life
At one point he even thought of giving up, but...
"To be honest, here it's hard and I was ready to give up on living in the States. I just... feels too difficult for me. 22 hour flight home, no families around, when you're playing good you are not celebrating with anyone. When you're playing bad you're staying with yourself again, you can't explain anything to anyone.
It's not a good time for me in the whole year, but I'm coming from Thailand, a small country in Asia. To be a part of the PGA Tour is such a huge honour and I think every kid in Asia, when you start playing golf, you saw Tiger, you saw Rickie, you saw Jordan, all the great players in the world play on the PGA Tour." Even as a boy, he fantasized about a career in the golf scene.
Tiger Woods was one of the idols. "For sure, you want to be a part of it and I saw Tiger playing in 1999, which he dominated every single event. I keep dreaming that one day I'll be part of the PGA Tour and then you know, 12-13 years later I make my dreams come true, but this road is difficult.
You have to realise that this is the biggest Tour in the world, with the top players, so it's a lot of competition so you can't stay still, you have to keep working and improve every day."