As a rule, those of us who follow professional golf tend to pounce quickly on early-career slumps. So many phenoms have come and gone that it gets easy to presume that a young player’s first missteps are the end of their PGA road far more than a pothole toward the beginning. Lately, though, that cynicism hasn’t matched reality.
Local boy Bryson DeChambeau, for example, was losing .7 strokes to the field over a 50-round moving average at the end of a dark tunnel that spanned 2022 and 2023. He was here for a good time, not a long time, so the thinking went. Maybe he’d permanently fallen into a crater of injury and self-induced bad PR. Then he showed back up, got that 50-round moving average above 2 strokes gained per round and, of course, won the U.S. Open.
Collin Morikawa, the two-time major winner and former No. 2 in the world, dipped as low as 23rd in those rankings during a difficult stretch in 2023. That prompted much discussion over where he fit in this current crop of the game’s best. Didn’t last long: although Morikawa has yet to get over the hump with a win, his 2024 has seen a rise back to No. 6.
The same mistake might be getting made with Tom Kim, the Dallasite by way of South Korea (and, as he grew up, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand). It wasn’t too long ago that Kim looked like one of the very best young talents in the game. His first PGA Tour win came by five shots, through a final-round 61, after he’d spotted the field with a quadruple bogey on his first hole of the tournament. He dazzled at the President’s Cup later that fall, keeping things interesting with some aspirational on-course energy while stealing two points from the mighty Americans.
He notched a second win faster than anyone ever save one guy who played when they wore neckties (a Dallasite himself!)—yes, faster than Woods, Spieth, and McIlroy. But that didn’t feel out of place, either, considering everything Kim had accomplished at such a young age. This was the guy who turned pro at age 15, became the second-youngest winner on the Asian Tour at 17 and a half, and then topped that tour’s money list as a teenager. There was a legitimate argument that Kim was due a rapid ascension to the very top of the game; that he’d flown under the radar merely because that amateur career took place outside the United States.
Several months of substandard play have blurred that picture. Eight months passed between his third victory on tour in late 2023 and his next top-10 finish. He was performing merely a touch over tour average for much of that stretch. Was Kim just a flash-in-the-pan young ’un settling into the Tour’s second tier, or even its third? Or does he still possess legitimate superstar potential?
His play as of late has been defined by an inconsistency often accompanying players peeking their way out of a hole. Depending on the week, a breakout can feel close or very far away. He finished second at the Travelers Championship in June, losing in a playoff to Scottie Scheffler, then missed the cut five days later at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. He looked strong at the Olympics—one of his few chances to earn a medal and avoid two years of mandatory military duty in South Korea—and finished in eighth place.
For a brief moment, it appeared he’d undo the shackles this past week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. He jumped out to 4-under and the lead through 10 holes, only to stumble back to +1 by the end of Thursday. The same up-and-down defined his Friday and Saturday, before the week went from bad to worse over his final three holes of the tournament. Sitting at 46th place in the FedEx Cup standings and needing to finish inside the top 50 for a ticket to next week’s BMW Championship, Kim finished bogey-double-double. Those three holes sank him to 51st in the year-long standings and brought an abrupt end to his year.
“This season has just been like this,” he said while reflecting after the round. “I’ve played really good golf and had some tough finishes.” He talked about the grind of nine straight weeks on the road, seeming almost resigned to the outcome. “I told myself before the day that if I didn’t play well, I really thought I was going to finish 51.”
Kim has one glaring weakness in his physical game: his distance off the tee. He ranked 121st in that category in 2022-23, and 97th in 2024. It’s not vital that it drastically changes—Morikawa ranks 137th in that department this year, for instance—but there’s no arguing the advantage distance affords. Jordan Spieth has shown it’s not impossible to make significant strides. Doing so without negatively impacting other parts of your game can be tricky.
Historically, Kim has overcome those distance deficiencies by hitting it on an absolute string. Accuracy was the trait that catapulted him to his early-career success and which, for my money, makes for some of the most exciting golf to watch. Distance is fun, sure, but there’s nothing like a ball striker on the hunt. He ranked 12th in strokes gained driving accuracy and 10th in strokes gained approach to green last year, but those numbers sank to 31st and 50th, in 2024. He’s talked about how gaining speed means getting the golf club in new positions, the sorts of changes that do not always feel natural and require time to implement. But, at risk of oversimplifying, that feels like his path to superstardom: slowly picking up distance while remaining one of the game’s best with an iron in his hands.
For now, whether or not he’ll get there remains unclear. Maybe the ceiling becomes more obvious over the next year as he continues to fight his way back to his top form. Maybe clues emerge this September at Kim’s second President’s Cup, when he’ll no longer have the luxury of catching the Americans by surprise.
It’s easy to wonder how much of his subdued 2024 has been mental. Maybe it all felt easier for Kim when he first arrived, before he’d really taken stock of the lions lurking in the brush. I think back to the Netflix series Full Swing, which has chronicled the last two years of professional golf behind the scenes. Kim earned himself a featured episode in season two, covering 2023. The series showed guys like Spieth and Justin Thomas giving Kim a little ribbing for his youthful appearance. He didn’t shy away from how it wears on him.
“There are a lot of jokes about me being 12 years old,” he said in one memorable sequence. “I just want to be taken seriously.”
After a year in which he has not necessarily raised his standing among those peers, Kim is ready to rest and regroup. “I feel like 2024 has really kicked me in the butt,” he told reporters after Sunday’s disappointment, but the subtext seemed to be that he’s filled with hope for a turnaround in 2025. I wouldn’t bet against it. He’s still just 22, an age at which even some of the best U.S. amateurs are just beginning their lives on tour. And if recent history has told us anything, no one should be in a rush to write his epitaph too soon.
Author
