For the second consecutive Presidents Cup, Tom Kim was the emotional leader of the international team.
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On paper, this year’s Presidents Cup looked like another challenge, with Americans win 18.5-11.5 to earn their 10th straight win and improve their all-time record to 13-1-1 against the Internationals.
But those few days at the Royal Montreal Golf Club in Montreal, Quebec, last month were anything but ordinary.
It wasn’t that test exchange between Scottie Scheffler and Tom Kim during Thursday’s opening session, and Kim made more headlines when he said he could hear “some players insulting us” amid an exciting four-way match in which Xander Schauffle and Patrick Cantlay defeated Kim and Si Woo Kim 1 on Saturday night. In the last away game, players from both teams were following and watching.
“I don’t think there was a good sport there,” Tom Kim said. His cursing and sporting comments went viral.
“I felt like Pat and I, we treated the Kims with the utmost respect,” Schauffele said. “We’re trying to calm the crowds down when they’re hitting. We’re trying to calm the crowds down when we’re hitting. That was right, grab and go. I have no idea if anyone was doing any of this. I don’t believe any of our boys would do such a thing. So I’m not sure what he was listening to.”
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Paul Tesori, Tom Kim’s caddy, offered his take on the controversy when he joined Brian Crowell and Frank Darby in SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio on sunday.
“Obviously, I’ve witnessed three scenarios where members of the US team were very blunt with Tom and yes, cursed at him and got very personal,” Tesori said. “And at the end of the day, nobody wants that. These two guys who had done that, I don’t think it’s in their character at all. I know one of them apologized, which is great. The heat of the moment got to him. But I want to say something about it. When Tom mentioned this in Saturday’s press conference, I didn’t know he had done it. And when he came in, he shared with me what he did, and that’s part of what a 52-year-old veteran can share with a 22-year-old. I said, Tom, you have every right to feel the way you did.
“One of them, I saw a foot away from me. And the feelings I had inside were very New York Bethpagey. I wanted to react physically and I was upset by what had happened, but at the end of the day I also know the character of the person it happened to, I don’t believe that’s the case and Tom handled it very well. Now, there’s no reason for him to go to the media, and we know in the world we live in now, even if there was video evidence of what happened, half the world will think he’s a kid and the other half will to go to think it is viable.”
Tesori said they were “only two of the 24 guys who acted in a way that I would be ashamed to act”, but added that Kim must have a thicker skin.
“At the end of the day, he can’t go to the media and spell it out,” Tesori said. “You have to go talk to your captains about it, go talk to your teammates about it and it’s a learning experience for Tom. And I think that’s what it comes down to.”
Kim was also involved in an incident with Scheffler during Thursday’s four-ball session. Kim screamed and celebrated after making a long birdie putt on the 7th hole, but Scheffler brushed it off shortly after birdieing it, yelling “What was that?” to Kim.
On the 8th, Kim made another birdie and followed it up with another vocal celebration, but Kim and Sungjae Im didn’t stop to watch Scheffler tee off, instead walking to the 9th green.
“Well, that borders on bad behavior there,” analyst Paul McGinley said on the air. “This is disrespectful, in my opinion. I know it’s competitive out there. But it certainly shows you that there’s an underlying advantage here that it’s not all fun and games.”
On PGA Tour Radio Sunday, Tesori said Kim and Im walked to the 9th tee after assistant captain Camilo Villegas instructed them to do so.
Outwardly to Camilo, he thought, ‘Oh my god, this is getting bad; this is getting personal; this is going to go to a bad place and I’m going to get these guys out of here because when Scottie makes that 9-footer, he’s going to be looking right at Tom,’” Tesori said. “Camilo admitted that he was wrong. He shouldn’t have done that. His guilt was, ‘I have to get them out of this situation.’
American assistant captain Kevin Kisner was on the green when it happened. He was on Barstool’s Fore Play Podcast last week and called the movement the “Bush League.” He said he spoke to Villegas a few days later to sort things out.
“He said, ‘Dude, I’ll just be honest with you, when I saw Scottie (yells back at 7), I was a little scared for my boys; he was the scariest-looking Scottie Scheffer I’d ever seen, so I just didn’t want him to take a layup and have something go wrong,” Kisner said. “I’ll take your word for it, but I still thought it was bulls–.”
