Did Good Karma Help Sahith Theegala Win $7.5 Million Golf Prize
Sahith Theegala called a penalty on himself yet went on to finish third at the PGA TOUR Championship
September 2, 2024
On Saturday, during his third round at the Professional Golf Association’s (PGA) TOUR Championship, Sahith Theegala realized his club touched the sand before he hit the ball out of a bunker on the third hole. He told a rules official about it who penalized him two strokes.
“It was an unusual lie and I usually pick up the club and take it back, but because of the lie, right on my backswing, I felt like I moved a few grains of sand for sure,” Theegala said in a post-round media interview according to PGATour.com. The tournament was held at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.
Theegala, 26-years-old, may have admitted breaking a rule to avoid a worse fate. As he told the media, had the incident been reported after he finished his third round he would have been disqualified. This would have meant personal embarrassment as well as $0 in prize money. Or Theegala was just being honest. TV replays do not clearly show any movement of the sand before Theegala’s shot.
Theegala was loudly cheered at the TOUR championship, as he is at other tournaments, by 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. Chan, who met Theegala while they were students at Pepperdine in 2017, is a competitive swimmer.
After Theegala’s third round, Juju Chan posted on TikTok that “we believe in Karma and we know he did the right thing.” Theegala scored five under par on the round, even with the two-stroke penalty. “Who knows if that would have happened if he had not said something (about breaking a rule)…everything happens for a reason.” Chan added, “always proud of sahith for being genuine and having high character.”
Yesterday, in the TOUR championship’s final round, Theegala finished in third place, winning $7.5 million in the final tournament of the 2023-24 PGA season. As some in the media speculated, by penalizing himself Theegala gave up an additional $2.5 million in prize money: without the two-stroke penalty he would have tied for second place and won $10 million.
After Theegala’s third place finish and largest prize money so far, Chan posted on TikTok, that Theegala is “being financially responsible or whatever” since they took a commercial flight, and not a private jet, to fly back to Houston where they reside.
“Akshay says we are probably the only ones on the tour taking a commercial flight,” responded Presleigh Schultz to Chan’s post on TikTok. Schultz is the fiancée of Akshay Bhatia, who finished 26th at the TOUR Championship. Bhatia, 22-years-old, won $590,000 in prize money at the championship. His total winnings since joining the PGA tour in 2023 is roughly $8 million.
In the 2023-2024 season, while he won no championships, Theegala finished among the top ten in eight PGA tournaments. Since joining the PGA Tour in 2022, he has won once and been runner up four times. Currently ranked number 12th in the world, he was won roughly $19 million in prize money.
Also, Theegala earns fees from eight sponsors for wearing their logos on his clothing, including from golf equipment maker PING displayed on his cap. Apparently Chan and Schultz post on TikTok and other social media platforms to try and attract more followers for Theegala and Bhatia respectively. More followers mean bigger sponsors and higher fees paid by sponsors.
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Sahith Reddy Theegala – and Bhatia - are rare Indian Americans to achieve major success in sports. 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.”
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, which are open to the public, in Orange County, California. While the fees are low - 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 greatest golfer.
“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.
The nicest car the family had, when he was growing up, was a Volkswagen Passat which his parents gave him when turned 16. Now, with his PGA tour winnings Theegala could buy “nice” cars for his parents and himself - if he has not already done so - as he told an interviewer for PGATOUR.com.
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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.
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.”
After his third round at the TOUR championship on Saturday, Theegala told the media, “pretty sure I breached the rules, so I'm paying the price for it, and I feel good about it...Two shots is a lot, but at the end of the day you've got a lot more golf to play. Tried to use it as a positive.”