Anthony Kim at the LIV Golf event in Andalucia in July.
David Cannon/Getty Images
For the first time in 13 years, Anthony Kim is climbing the Official World Golf Ranking, and this is the biggest jump of his career.
Kim made the cut at this week’s Asian Tour International Series event in Qatar and fired a final-round 71 to finish in a tie for 37th on Sunday.
That might sound like a lot, but it’s Kim’s first cut in his comeback that began earlier this year. Kim’s comeback has been mostly in LIV Golf events, which not only don’t have a cut, but don’t even award OWGR points. The only OWGR-recognized tournament that Kim has played this season was the Macau International Series event in March, where he missed the cut.
So the .36805 points Kim earns for the finish this week are the first OWGR points he’s earned in 12 years, since a T42 finish at the 2012 Honda Classic. The 1.63 points he collected that week actually weren’t enough for them kept him from falling from 115th to 116th in the rankings that week, but while he only gained more than a fifth of points this week, the resulting jump in the standings was far more significant. .
When the new rankings are released on Monday, Kim will see his ranking, the 4,595th-ranked player in the world entering the week, jump 2,281 places to No. 2,314. While his ranking is still far from his peak from 2008, when he reached No. 6 in the world after the Tour Championship, the jump is still one of the biggest in ranking history.
During his many comebacks, Tiger Woods has routinely done so several hundred jumps in place after some of his first comeback events. Earlier this year, Nick Dunlap made an OWGR jump of more than 4,000 points when he won his first PGA Tour as an amateur, the largest jump in ranking history.
For Kim, it is the first time he has improved his ranking since 2011. his last full season on the PGA Tour.
Kim disappeared for 11 years from competitive golf, developing a cult hero-like status in front of him reappeared in March of this year, signing an agreement with LIV Golf as one of the league’s Wildcard players. The 39-year-old played in 11 LIV Golf events this seasonwith his best finish coming at the LIV Golf Greenbrier with a 36th-place showing in a 54-player field. He did not earn points in the standings during the season.
The six-time PGA Tour winner’s contract with LIV was reportedly for one year.
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