AUGUSTA, Ga. — “If you would’ve told me when I was 16, which was four years ago …”
Tom Kim says this so comfortably, in a way that only the young can, those lost in the good life, whose age hasn’t worn away at that cloak of invincibility. Kim is 20. On Monday he played a practice round at Augusta National with Rory McIlroy, who turned pro in 2007, when Kim was 5; and Tiger Woods, who was an eight-time major winner by the time Kim was born in 2002; and Fred Couples, who was born in 1959, a breezy 43 years earlier.
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Kim walked alongside those luminaries on the way from No. 11 green to 12 tee. The crowd greeted them as you’d expect. Swooning. Tiger did his little wave-and-nod. Rory smiled like Rory smiles. Freddie was Freddie.
But there, too, in that rarest of air, was Tom Kim.
Tom.
Kim.
Ask him about these moments and oftentimes he responds with the type of poise that suggests he’s always felt this was inevitable. That this is where he’d be. That this is where he belongs. He comes at it with an aw-shucks quality, but there’s an underlying tension at play — Tom Kim is aware of the hype. A few weeks ago, in a conversation at TPC Sawgrass, he offered a look and a shrug and said, “I don’t think I’m quite where people say I am. Basically, I’m just trying to get more experience out here really fast.”
How does one get experience really fast?
That’s the type of contradiction that comes on with a white-knuckle ascent like Tom Kim.
It’s not slowing. If anything, it’s only accelerating. It’ll hit another atmosphere on Thursday when Kim makes his Masters debut, playing alongside McIlroy and Sam Burns in a marquee afternoon grouping.
Why the big to-do? For those catching up, Kim began 2022 only holding status on the Asian Tour. He then landed a spot in the Scottish Open, finished third, then made the cut at the Open Championship at St. Andrews. Some began wondering, who the hell is this? Then Kim accepted special temporary status on the PGA Tour, finished seventh in Detroit, and then, in a thunderclap, won the Wyndham Championship by five shots. This was only seven months ago. At 20, Kim became the second-youngest winner on the PGA Tour since 1932, trailing only Jordan Spieth.
How young is 20 out here? The average age of last year’s other PGA Tour winners was a hearty 30.6 years old. The second-youngest winner was 24-year-old Joaquín Niemann. Cameron Young, who topped Kim in last season’s PGA Tour Rookie of the Year vote, is 25. The other top vote-getter, Sahith Theegala, is also 25. The 2021 Rookie of the Year, Will Zalatoris, was also 25 at the time. Scottie Scheffler, the 2020 winner, was 24. Even Sungjae Im, who turned professional at 17, was older as a rookie (21) than Kim is now.
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Or, to put it this way, Kim is younger than eight of the 10 players ranked atop the World Amateur Golf Rankings.
Last year’s Wyndham win earned Kim a spot in the Presidents Cup. He responded with a show. The lone discernible memories from an otherwise monotonous event were Max Homa delivering a career breakthrough and Kim playing with this type of swaggy indifference that served as a love note to fans and media. He made a putt to win a hole and walked off the green without the ball. He made another winning putt, dropped his putter, and left without that, too.
On No. 18 on Saturday, paired with Si Woo Kim for afternoon fourball against the Americans’ top pairing of Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, Kim unloaded a 2-iron from 223 yards out, hitting it to 10 feet in a match that arrived at all-square. He then rolled in the winning putt, spiked his hat and set off a wild celebration.
Trevor Immelman, the International Team captain, summed things up: “Tom Kim is absolutely poised as the next global superstar. He has an uncanny ability to have amazing self-confidence but still be humble. He’s like a shining light. He makes you want to root for him.”
This was new.
And new is often rare in golf.
Kim backed it up by winning at Shriners in October. He became the first player since Woods to win twice on the PGA Tour before turning 21. He’s posted four top-10 finishes since and is the No. 19-ranked player in the Official World Golf Ranking.
That brings us to today where, more than any ranking, Tom Kim is a thing. A certified thing. The Nike deal came in January. An undisclosed amount, but surely a massive bag. Instead of being a walking billboard, Kim is exclusively adorned by the swoosh and no one is shy about what that means.
“He wants to be the GOAT,” Ben Harrison, Kim’s agent, said. “And, you know, if you want to be the GOAT, you’ve got to be among them. So, for him, as a brand, Nike is such an elite global brand. All the best athletes in the world, at some point, have been with them.”
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This is a far cry from what was.
Kim speaks of formative years as if they’re of another time. Far removed. Unsentimental. Then you realize he’s referencing, like, 2019.
It was that recently that Joohyung Kim, born in 2002 in Seoul, South Korea, was essentially supporting his family. Parents Changik Lee and Kwanjoo Kim went all-in on Joohyung’s golfing dream early. Changik was a mini-tour pro turned teaching professional and taught his son the game. The family moved often, eventually landing in Australia, where Joohyung learned English and grew into a world-class junior player. As a kid, Joohyung loved Thomas the Tank Engine. He had the lunchbox, all the toys; he loved it so much that he started going by Thomas. By the time he was 11, an incidental name change was complete. He was Tom.
At 13, it was off to the Philippines, where one of the best clubs in the country asked young Tom to play in its developmental system and gave him access to proper facilities. He soon won every amateur event in the Philippines.
At 15, it was off to Thailand, where Tom could play professionally while waiting to turn 16, the minimum age to compete in Asian Tour Q school. As time passed, he won three times on the Asian Development Tour. He would go on to play a half-season on the Asian Tour before COVID-19 hit. He played on the Korean Tour in 2020 and 2021 while preparing for Korn Ferry Q school and posted wins in Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.
In the early days of his pro career, it was Tom Kim and his father, who doubled as his caddie, traveling from tournament to tournament, from country to country. The 16-year-old was essentially responsible for the family finances.
“Kind of, yeah,” Tom said. “My parents stopped working to support me. So it was just about me accomplishing my goals and pursuing my dreams.”
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But did he understand the dynamics of being the family’s primary financial earner?
“Oh, yeah. I definitely understood how hard it was for them to be parents and how hard it is to put food on the table, stuff like that. It was a very valuable lesson that, instead of learning at 35 or 40, I learned at 15 or 16. But I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
That money earned, he added, wasn’t much.
“It’s something you should experience in your life.”
Hearing him tell it, Tom Kim didn’t exactly grow from child to adolescent to teenager to young man. Instead, he went from younger to older. He says he knew early on that “I needed to transition quickly to be a more mature person.” So that’s how this has all gone.
Warp speed. Older, faster. Forward. No time.
“I don’t think I’d be here today without that experience — without the burden, without the pressure,” he said. “I used it as motivation to play, not as something to affect me. It was motivation to practice harder, get better, move up faster. I think it shaped my mentality and my game a lot faster than it would’ve happened.”
Now at 20, Tom Kim is renting a house in Dallas and practicing out of Dallas National and Trinity Forest. He went from an unknown to the popular new guy overnight. It hasn’t gone unnoticed. Those who can relate to the ride are now offering a seat at the table. He regularly spends time with McIlroy. He spent Christmas with Jordan Spieth and joins him on private planes. He hung out with Tiger in the Bahamas. While Kim likes to say that he’s not a big star yet, all signs indicate otherwise.
Year 2 of the Tom Kim Experience will be a different voyage. And it will be broadcast in Featured Groups. The PGA Tour is pushing Kim to the front of the line in all ways possible. Social media feeds, signage, commercial time. He is a major commodity. As Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and others joined rival LIV Golf, the PGA Tour has been sapped of some marketable pieces and needs fresh new faces. There’s nothing fresher than Tom Kim.
Pimento, egg salad, peach ice cream sandwich. A trip through Masters concessions with Tournament rookie Tom Kim. #themasters pic.twitter.com/iroNrmwMY0
— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 5, 2023
That said, in part because of last fall’s Presidents Cup, Kim is often being branded in a happy-go-lucky light. That, in turn, might lead fans to expect some jovial, hyper-charismatic kid.
That’s not exactly Tom Kim.
Tom Kim is deeply serious about golf. It translates to how he plays. There’s a stoicism to everything in relation to his swing. Methodical. Almost robotic. He’s elite with his irons, but lacks distance off the tee. Some wonder if that caps his potential. Kim is trying to address it by adding speed and gaining a few yards. He’s also doing all of this while being 20 and regularly playing courses he’s never seen before. There’s a lot going on and for someone attempting a misnomer — getting experience quickly — there isn’t much time to enjoy the view.
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“Before, I think I probably interacted with the fans more than I do now,” Kim said. “Now I’m just trying to play the best golf that I can. I’m definitely more focused.”
This week, Tom Kim, the youngest professional in the field at Augusta, was invited to fill a slot in the interview room. Of the 12 pros to conduct news conferences, he, Homa and Cantlay were the only non-major winners to formally address the media. He tried to explain his ascent as best he could but stumbled.
“I am 20, but I don’t really feel like I’m 20,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like …”
He paused and sort of surveyed the room. A follow-up came. “How old do you feel?”
“I feel like — I can’t say it,” Kim responded. “I feel like it’s going to be very rude.”
Kim joked that he’s already in his Clooney years. As he has done with so much of his life, he rushed through the answer. He tried to explain, “I do feel a lot more — I’m still maturing, that’s my big thing — but I do feel a lot older than I am.”
Yet, if he can pull it off this week, Tom Kim could become the youngest winner in Masters history. Is he a long shot? By some measures, yes, but considering what has occurred over the last year, would it be that surprising? There’s no conventional timeline for Tom Kim. At least there hasn’t been one, yet.
Having already won twice on tour, Kim is already on to the next thing.
The goal is clear, and Tom Kim says so comfortably.
“If you don’t win majors, you’re just not going to be remembered,” he said. “It’s that straightforward. If you don’t win majors, some day, you’ll be forgotten. But if you win majors, you will be remembered and considered one of the greats in the game. Everyone wants to win majors, it’s just a matter of who has the guts to do it.”
(Illustration: Sam Richardson / The Athletic; photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
