Kevin Techakanokboon: My memories of Arie

Editor’s Note: Kevin Techakanokboon is in his second full season as a PGA TOUR Series-China player and has played professionally throughout Asia since turning pro in 2015 after playing collegiately at Long Beach State University in California. Techakanokboon was roommates with Malaysia’s Arie Irawan in Sanya, China, when Irawan died in his sleep early Sunday morning, April 7. The American-born player of Thai descent wrote this piece in memory of his friend.

When I would room with my good friend Arie Irawan during PGA TOUR Series-China tournaments, one of the things I noticed we both did after our rounds, good or bad, was overanalyze things about our play. Because of that, I would always try to find ways to get us to disconnect once we were off the golf course. We would play a video game, or we might watch TV. We would definitely do stuff to get us to relax and get ready for the next day and not necessarily talk about golf.

Last year, we were playing the Zhuhai Championship in Zhuhai, China, the second-to-last tournament of the PGA TOUR Series-China season. The two of us sharing a hotel room to cut down on expenses was our normal pattern when Arie’s wife wasn’t traveling with him. That week, I was playing pretty well, but Arie missed the cut.

Friday night, we were back in the room watching “The Office” on Netflix when Arie said, “I’ll come caddie for you tomorrow.” He said it kind of jokingly, so I came back with, “Yeah, sure.”

I didn’t use a caddie in the first two rounds, so I could use one. But I honestly didn’t think he was being serious. He then said, “Yeah, I’ll take the first shuttle bus from the hotel to the course, I’ll get my practice in and then I’ll see you on the first tee.”

Well, Saturday morning came, and Arie left the hotel to go to the course way before I did. By the time I got there, he found me and said, “I’ll see you in a little bit.” I thought he was going to practice putting or have a little breakfast. But a few minutes later, he comes back from the locker room, and he had changed into shorts, he had his running shoes on and he was at the practice tee ready to go. All he needed was a caddie bib.

All right, I thought, I guess we’re doing this.

That was the first time Arie Irawan served as my caddie, and what a weekend it was.

For my third round I was paired with my close friend Gunn Charoenkul, and Gunn’s girlfriend—now wife—Vichuda, or “Koy” as she’s more commonly known, was caddying for him.

Here’s an admission: Since turning professional, I have never really had much success on weekends of tournaments. Now, whether that’s a fatigue issue or mental issue or something else, I really don’t know. For some reason, though, I haven’t played well.

That Saturday, with Arie as my caddie, I put a strong round together. I felt very lucky to be paired with Gunn and have Arie carrying my clubs. To be honest, the round didn’t feel like we were playing in a tournament at all. It felt like we were just out there going about our business playing a casual round of golf and joking around all day.

Between shots, Arie and I talked a lot, but we didn’t talk about golf. Instead, we joked about something he saw or something I saw. We talked about stuff that would take us away from the golf just enough before we had to get back into it. It was just what I needed.

That weekend Arie was definitely a reassuring presence for me. We had played practice rounds together earlier in the week, so we both knew the course pretty well. On hole 4 in Zhuhai, there is a big bridge you can see in the background off the tee. I would look at my line and say, “The fourth pillar on that bridge, OK?” I knew it was OK. I just wanted to hear someone say, “Yeah, it’s perfect.” Arie did that for me so many times during those two rounds.

When the third round ended, I didn’t know what position I was in, and instead of going straight to the bus, I went for a little practice. I knew I wasn’t that close to the lead when the day started. I shot a 66, 5-under, but I didn’t think I would close the gap by more than three shots on the leader. When Arie and I got on the bus to go back to the hotel, we checked the scores on my phone and saw I had a three-shot lead. The next-closest score to my 66 was a 69. This was new territory for me.

After the second round, Arie and I watched “The Last Samurai” and I ended up playing really well. Saturday night we followed our normal plan of decompression and, being a bit superstitious, we watched it again. It was a relaxing night, and the next day I won my first professional tournament, with Arie Irawan as my caddie.

This past Sunday, Arie died in the room we shared. He was sleeping in the bed right next to mine. I’m still trying to process what happened. The coroner said his death was from natural causes. We just don’t know what caused this, and we may never know. What I do know is not having him around is what I’m going to miss the most.

We first met in Indonesia when we were both playing the Asian Tour and the Asian Development Tour. We hit it off, but we didn’t spend a ton of time together. It wasn’t until the 2018 season in China that we really started to bond.

I remember we played the final round of China Q-School in February 2018 at Mission Hills in Haikou. We were paired together. He didn’t have the best of days. He had just an awful start, but he never stopped trying to claw his way back. On the last 10 holes, he kept inching his way closer and closer to fully exempt status. I think he may have missed getting his full card by a shot, maybe two. We were talking afterward, and he was pretty confident. He kept saying he was going to get his starts, that he was going to play his way into the top 50 on the Order of Merit. That’s the kind of guy he was. No matter how tough times got, he never had it in him to give up. He “got his starts,” he finished 49th last season, and I ended up No. 19, mainly because of my win in Zhuhai. We both kept our cards.

One of the many memories that I’ll look back on was our first night in Hong Kong. It was after the final round in Zhuhai, and it was also Ben Lein’s birthday. Ben is a Long Beach State guy as well who had also played in Zhuhai. So, we took the ferry to Hong Kong immediately after the tournament ended and found a street with a bunch of bars and restaurants. We went out to a nice dinner and decided to head out for some drinks afterward. But Arie doesn’t drink. He did, however, stick around for the party because he was so happy for me and so proud of what we had just accomplished. We were sitting there with a few of the guys we spend most of our time: Ben, Matthew Negri and Eugene Wong, and we were all having a great time celebrating the win as well as Ben’s birthday. Arie was texting his wife, Marina, letting her know he was out with the boys but that he wouldn’t stay out too late. Arie knew how to maintain relationships even if he was friends with people who didn’t quite walk along the same path as him. He was great that way, he was never much into judging people and he was always quick to share information or knowledge he had that he thought would help me or whoever else.

Arie and Marina shared themselves with us, and I’m so grateful they were such a big part of my life on Tour. Whether it was playing practice rounds with one another or and having dinner together with our group of friends, I’ll never forget the presence both Marina and Arie had on us. Life on Tour is so much more than just the hours that we spend on the course during competition, and it’s those times that we shared that I’ll look back on the most when I remember my friend, Arie Irawan.

I’ve had a flood of emotions since Sunday morning. Nothing really prepares you for something like this. How am I supposed to tell his wife what happened? How am I going to face his parents? There was just so much that I didn’t know how to say and so much that was left unsaid to Arie. But once Marina and Arie’s parents, Ahmad and Jeny, Marina’s sister and Arie’s aunt arrived in Sanya, I had the chance to meet with them. They were all so strong and so calm. You could really feel how much they all love him and miss him. You could see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. We all did our very best to hold it together and be strong for them in their time of suffering. In the end, it was Ahmad who told those of us who were with them that day to not let what happened with Arie stop us from going out and doing what we needed to do to take care of business. “Don’t stop,” he said to us. “It’s not what Arie would have wanted for you to do. Look back at all of the good times that you shared with Arie and be happy.”

I can do that, and I will try to continue doing that. Many of those good times involved us in California. For almost two years, we’ve shared the same swing coach, Dana Dahlquist, in Long Beach. Dana is a really good guy, and we would just try to soak up as much information as we could from listening in on Dana’s lessons. Then we would go out and practice and play together and put into practice the things we learned. I always figured I could be a second set of eyes for Arie out on Tour based on the things I learned while listening in on his lessons.

The best part about spending that time in California was I had the chance to show Arie a little of what my world back home is like. Last September, before our final stretch of events in China, I brought Arie to Heartwell Golf Course in Long Beach so he could play in the infamous Heartwell Skins Game, held every Wednesday evening. A typical turnout for the game includes some of my closest friends from junior golf, college teammates, my brother and some of the guys who had been playing at that course since I was about 7. I was able to introduce Arie to all of these friends of mine, and he cleaned up that night.

That’s the thing with Arie. There weren’t a lot of guys who he didn’t get along with. Everybody was touched by the guy in some way, and everybody has Arie stories to tell. Today, you talk to people from any of the Tours he played on who knew him well and they will all tell you—every one of them—he was not just another face on the Tour.