Tom Kim after a playoff at the Genesis Championship on Sunday.
getty images
In the wee hours of Sunday morning in the US, a fairytale finish was playing out across the Pacific, in Incheon, South Korea, on the outskirts of Seoul.
Placement: Genesis Championship in Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea. Protagonists: two of the leading lights of Korean golf: 22-year-old Tom Kim, who has already won three times on the PGA Tour and cemented his status as a President’s Cup legendand 33-year-old Ben An, a former US Amateur winner who is now ranked in the top 30 in the world. With two national heroes duking it out on the field, the thrilling finish to the tournament was the stuff of dreams.
When Kim and An, who were playing together in the final set, reached the 18th green, Kim led the tournament by one, at 17 under. But the score was still very even with Annie at 16 and both players looking at 8 feet for birdie. One rose first – and threw it. Next came Kim. His effort also looked good until it didn’t. When Kim’s ball reached the hole, it caught the right edge of the cup and rolled out. Kim flipped his camera in the air and raised his hands to his mouth in disbelief.
The title would be decided in a sudden-death playoff, and it wouldn’t take long to decide.
On the first playoff hole – the watery and dangerous par-5 18th – both players hit drives that allowed them to try and get to deuce. Kim played his second shot first, leaving his ball just short of the green, but on a difficult, choked lie. Ani’s drive also missed the green, just long and right, but he left himself a straight chip from the flat. For his third, Kim had to get his feet into a bunker and hit a delicate chip into a short-sided pin. He forgot the subtle part, blasting his ball through the green and into the fairway. When Kim couldn’t get up and down after a free fall, An had a 6-footer for the win. Drain.
How much the victory meant to Ani became clear when he found his grandmother waiting for him near the green. He fell into her arms and cried into her shoulder in what was one of the most loving moments of the golf season.
An called the win a “sweet end to the year”, adding, “it’s a bit of a shame that Tom had a bit of a mess there, but it’s been a great tournament for me. I’ve really enjoyed it.”
Kim was feeling his emotions, though their expression was hidden from the public eye. After the playoffs, he retreated to the locker room and began to process what should have been an excruciating loss in front of his home fans. Frustrated, he opened the door to locker number 571, pulling it off its hinges. That detail was reported for the first time BY Korea JoongAng Daily and an image of the closet began circulating on Monday morning in the US. The paper also reported that the KPGA, which co-sanctions the Genesis Championship with the DP World Tour, is considering taking “disciplinary” action against Kim.
In a phone interview with GOLF.com, however, Kim’s manager, Ben Harrison, said he was not aware of any discussions regarding disciplinary action. “I haven’t heard anything,” Harrison said Monday morning. “I asked Tom. They never told him anything. I don’t know where this comes from. Nothing has been mentioned to us, Tom or Tom’s family.”
In one post on social mediaKim added that “speculation” about any kind of punishment was “false reporting” and that he did not “intend to harm any part of the cabinet”.
He said he apologized for his behavior and offered to pay to repair the broken door. “I spoke to Tour shortly after the incident,” Kim wrote. “After my apology and offer to pay damages, the case was considered closed.”
KPGA did not immediately respond to an emailed query.
Harrison was not at the scene, but has spoken with Kim and one of Harrison’s co-workers, who was in the locker room with Kim. He said that although his client was upset, he was not out of control.
“He’s portrayed as someone who broke a locker and basically came out as a kid,” Harrison said. “That’s not what he did. He broke the cupboard because he opened it too – he didn’t take a stick and break it. He literally grabbed the handle of the closet, opened it super-aggressively and broke a hinge.”
When asked if he had ever seen Kim react like that after a round, Harrison said, “No, it didn’t appear that way.”
Harrison added that he believes players should be afforded privacy in the locker room — that in the moments after a round the locker room should be a haven for players to decompress and gather their thoughts before speaking. with journalists.
“The locker room is the locker room,” Harrison said. “It doesn’t mean it’s like a rage room and you can go destroy it. But you can handle your loss, you can handle your disappointment, and then go out and do your media.”
Kim, who is ranked 25th in the world, has had a relatively quiet season on the PGA Tour with just two top-10 finishes, at the RBC Canadian Open and the Travelers Championship, both in June. Most of the headlines he created this year came from the Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal, where he picked up where he left off in the 2022 edition, serving as The emotional spark of the international team.
Kim didn’t win all of his games — he finished the week 1-2-1 — but no player on his side brought more moxie (along with a bunch of controversies) in proceedings, including high-profile matches against the likes of Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele.
“I’m very passionate,” Kim said ahead of those matches. “I think energy is a big thing, especially as a young guy. I showed a lot of emotion there.”
Harrison will tell you that Kim is a golfer with high expectations of himself and who cares deeply about delivering in the big moments. The locker room incident, the agent said, was nothing more than an innocent, if unfortunate, byproduct of that competition.
“I’ve been in this business for 25 years managing guys at every end of the spectrum,” Harrison said. “Whether it’s a guy missing a card at Q School by one stroke, whether it’s a guy missing a playoff in a major, a guy missing points in the Ryder Cup, I’ve been side by side with these guys, and they give like —.”
Alan Bastable
Editor of Golf.com
As executive editor of GOLF.com, Bastable is responsible for the editorial direction and voice of one of the game’s most respected and highly trafficked news sites and services. He wears many hats – editing, writing, ideation, development, dreaming of one day turning 80 – and feels privileged to work with such a talented and hard-working group of writers, editors and producers. Before taking the reins at GOLF.com, he was the features editor at GOLF Magazine. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and four children.
