It’s the 30th time in a row that Phichaksn Maichon has listened to “Shape of You,” and he is sick and tired of Ed Sheeran.
“It was just playing over and over and getting in my head, just trying to get me to sleep,” Maichon said.
Such are the perils of international travel. Maichon was in the middle of one his annual trips from California — where he played in golf tournaments during the summer months as he tried to get recruited to play for a college program — back to his native Thailand, when the seatback screen in front of him suddenly broke just an hour into the trans-pacific flight.
“I didn’t download any movies,” Maichon said. “I didn’t have any games on my phone that I could play without internet. I had one song on my download list, and it was a 15 hour flight back home. And it was probably the longest flight I’ve ever had.”
And so Maichon survived his 15-hour Ed Sheeran odyssey with another lesson learned: Always keep plenty of music on hand for long flights.
And while that may not be the most applicable tip on the golf course, there’s plenty of lessons from Maichon’s travel and upbringing — he’s spent time living in Thailand, China, California and finally Texas — that have built him into the golfer he is today.
“One thing I’ve learned is patience,” Maichon said. “That’s what [Texas A&M head coach Brian Kortan] tells me and emphasizes all the time, that we have more patience. So you need a lot of patience when you’re flying out, because there’s going to be delays, there’s going to be all the stuff that’s not going your way.”
Born in Thailand, Maichon first picked up the sport of golf in China when his dad happened to find the Masters on television and Maichon got his first look at Tiger Woods.
“I was like, ‘I want to be like him,’ and my dad was like, ‘Well, you’ve got a long way to go, son,’” Maichon said. “That’s what he told me. My dad was still in the Navy back then, and he had a set of clubs and I just took a swing around the house. And apparently I broke stuff, like the vase, windows and table.”
Maichon says the biggest challenge of his family’s constant movement was learning to adapt to new locales and the new cultures came with each new stop. But it’s another lesson that he says has helped him on the golf course.
“In golf, you travel every week,” Maichon said. “You see something different every time. You go to California, next thing you know you’re going to Florida, and then you go to Washington, and you see all different stuff. You’re playing everywhere. You’re not playing in one state every single time, and different states have different cultures. And I feel like it’s been very helpful for me to accept the fact that everyone can have different thoughts.”
Initially, Maichon’s time at Texas A&M was a rough transition. On the golf course, he hadn’t been able to play golf for months due to COVID-19 restrictions in Thailand by the time he made his way to A&M as a freshman.
Off the course, he was having to learn the lesson many folks new to the Lone Star State have to learn: There’s a pretty big difference between California and Texas.
Golf is one of the handful of NCAA sports that are traditionally individual sports at the professional level, but team sports in college. That’s something Maichon hasn’t taken for granted — and it’s helped him feel like A&M is a place he truly belongs.
“I love having teammates at Texas A&M,” Maichon said. “They feel like family. My coaches made me feel at home. That’s kind of a crucial thing for me, because I’m coming from all different places. It’s kind of hard to make a place feel like home, until I came to A&M.”
It’s a change his fellow Aggies have noticed too, fellow A&M golfer Vishnu Sadagopan says.
“I’m most proud of him for the way he handles himself,” Sadagopan said. “He’s really gotten better at the way he handles himself from a freshman to now, and I think that he’s matured a lot. I’m really proud of him for that aspect of his life and golf.”
A few years later, Maichon is more than comfortable in Aggieland ahead of his senior season. An honorable mention All-American his sophomore year, he sealed the putt that sent the Aggies to the NCAA Championships in 2023.
“He’s great to be around,” Kortan said. “He works his tail off, one of the hardest workers I’ve ever had as a college golf coach, takes pride in his schoolwork, and does a great job in the classroom. [He’s] really been just a solid student athlete and teammate from the time he set foot on campus.”
But perhaps the bigger transformation has come off of the course, as his teammates have seen. Maichon has fully embraced Texas — boots and all — Sadagopan says.
“The first time I really noticed it was when he was singing Luke Combs, word for word, for about five or six different songs,” Sadagopan said.
That’s not to say Maichon hasn’t stuck to his roots: Recently, he represented Thailand as part of Team International during the 2024 Arnold Palmer Cup, a college golf competition that pits the best of America’s collegiate golfers against a team of international players.
“You’re representing your country, which is pretty cool because you’re playing head-to-head,” Maichon said. “You get to play with your partner in a four ball foursome which is very cool, because you don’t get to do that a lot in golf. Golf is pretty much a one-player sport, but that event made it feel like a team. Like I said, I love playing on a team, because you don’t do that often.”
Maichon has successfully mastered plenty of transitions over his golf career, but with his collegiate career winding down, one more remains: Successfully turning professional, and reaching the PGA Tour — something Kortan says is more difficult than most might think, for reasons entirely unrelated to on-course talent.
“College guys, they don’t have to make plane reservations,” Kortan said. “They don’t have to make hotel reservations. They have things scheduled out, so we kind of help them with their time management. There’s a lot of things that we do behind the scenes that you don’t see. But for him to be successful, it’s not a talent issue, it’s not a desire issue, it’s not a heart issue, it’s going to be if he can adjust to what that life looks like and then maintain himself both physically and mentally to chase his dreams.”
But if there’s one thing Maichon has learned how to do over the years, it’s adapt.
“It kind of gave me a perspective in life,” Maichon said. “You travel a lot in golf, and you see different cultures and stuff, and I feel like I can use that to my advantage. Adapting to different kinds of stuff faster, it’s been a ride where I haven’t really gotten to settle down like I am now. It’s just a different point of view, and it’s just a different lifestyle, which I enjoy a lot.”
