Welcome to December, this is the season of joy and if you want to see some walking, talking joy — just take a look at Tom Kim on the golf course.
He was the heart and soul of the International team at the Presidents Cup and was a walking highlight reel.
This week, he’s absolutely giddy to be in Tiger’s tournament. Thrilled to be in the special 20-player field down in Albany and just wait until he finds out that in the Bahamas, he’s old enough to hit the casino!
He’s only 20-year-old and plays with the joy of a kid locked in a candy store. He smiles easily, he’s expressive and he can turn into Mr. Excitement, the way he did at the Presidents Cup matches.
On a windy Thursday, the first day of the Hero World Challenge, he was the only player to make his way around the wind-swept 18 holes without a bogey. And that’s saying a lot considering he’s in some pretty flashy company with six of the world’s top 10 on hand and Tour talent everywhere.
He got off to a bit of a slow start, if you want to call 10 straight pars under very windy conditions a slow start. “I had a slow start — found some opportunities on the back nine and finished strong,” said Kim, who stoned his approach to 18, leaving himself your basic gimme birdie putt to post three-under par 69 and share a piece of the round one lead.
“It was playing long,” was how Kim described the playing conditions. A strong storm blew through on Wednesday, wiping out the pro-am portion of the festivities and putting ball-in-hand for the first 18 holes. “I definitely got in a groove,” Kim said of his final nine. “I’m playing great and I’m just trying to play the best I can.”
And there’s where this young man grabs your attention. He’s a gamer. He missed eight greens on day one but was eight-for-eight on getting up-and-down — he putted just 25 times.
At Tuesday’s 87-yard shot challenge, Kim was all giddy, sitting close to Tiger. He remembered approaching Woods at the Presidents Cup. “We didn’t talk about anything serious, it was just a lot of small talk,” Kim said. “I told him we really would have loved it if he played this week and we’re really going to miss him. He was like, he was really trying to prepare hard for it and unfortunately he couldn’t make it. But it was really nice, it was the first time I officially got to meet him and talk to him a little bit. It was really cool, I have to kind of pinch myself a little bit.”
Tiger didn’t remember that. But he did talk about meeting Kim this week. “First time I met him was Tuesday,” Woods said on Thursday. “He’s humble, very well spoken, excited about the game and has a lot of talent.”
International team captain Trevor Immelman was even more complimentary at Quail Hollow:
“This young kid has burst onto the scene in the last six months, and it has been tremendous, he’s been such a tremendous gift to our sport. He has an ability to be a global superstar, this kid. I know he has the game. We’ve seen he has the game. But what I’ve learned about personality and his heart and what he stands for this week, man, I am a huge fan.”
Yes, it’s easy to be a Tom Kim fan.
He’s a 20-year-old living the dream in this season of joy.
