Tiger Woods understands struggle and he knows golf better than most. He has a lot of experience with both. He wrote his comeback.
On Sunday, Woods saw another that spoke to him, both as a golfer and as a person.
HAD Anthony Kim on Sundaypouring in layup after layup to chase Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau to win LIV Golf Adelaide and lifted his first trophy in 16 years.
Kim’s comeback is one of the most unlikely stories, and it’s one that has resonated deeply across the landscape of golf and larger sports. A prodigious talent who set the golf world on fire in his late years, Kim was a budding superstar. He won three times before the age of 25, was a Ryder Cup star at Valhalla and climbed to No. 6 in the world before an Achilles injury in 2012 saw him disappear from the world of professional golf. Kim has said he dealt with multiple injuries and battled “dark demons” and addiction during his time away from the sport. He rarely considered going back and only started playing golf again when his wife, Emily, showed interest in learning.
For more than a decade, Kim was a mythical figure. His return was speculated and hoped for, but he was never seen or heard from outside of the occasional unsubstantiated whisper that someone saw or heard that he was working on his game. Kim only returned to the professional ranks in 2024 when he signed with LIV.
Kim, now 40, has said it’s a minor miracle he’s still alive and has credited Emily and daughter Isabella with turning his life around. When he joined LIV, the game that once wowed everyone was far away. He talked about not knowing what modern golf technology was or how to use it. He looked like a man relearning the craft that once made him hover off the ground. There was little reason to believe he would return to the winner’s circle. He struggled in his first two seasons in LIV and found himself demoted at the end of last season. But Kim has been adamant that she has been working hard behind the scenes. This is something he wanted. He earned his place back through the LIV Promotions Event, which involved making a birdie on the 36th hole to punch his ticket to the weekend, where he eventually finished third.
Two months later, the impossible became reality.
On Sunday, at The Grange in South Australia, Kim’s 14-year journey — his trauma, his battle with his personal demons, his deferred dreams, his desire to climb — all came as he ran away from two of the best players in the world.
“I would say that was all the bad that I went through in my life that I was able to dig out of,” Kim said. “Every putt that went in, I felt the fight and I was getting over it. It was therapeutic to fight back and come out on top.”
Woods saw the kid who set professional golf on fire. The one who fought in Congress. The one who beat Sergio Garcia in Ryder Cup singles and made 11 birdies in a single round at the Masters. But he is also the man that time and trauma have changed. There can be room for both.
Anthony Kim is no longer the young bold and eccentric. Time and war have changed him. But that Anthony Kim came back as he turned in nearly every shot he looked at while outplaying Rahm and DeChambeau. Woods saw that Anthony Kim, but he also saw a man whose story there is a universal lesson that should be celebrated.
“This kid hit it really well,” Woods said Tuesday before the Genesis Invitational. “He was on an unbelievable run when he won in Charlotte, and we played each other — against each other in Congress. He played unbelievable in the 2008 Ryder Cup. He had so much natural talent. He could hit any shot he wanted.
“Then to see him struggle in life and didn’t really want to play golf, didn’t want to be a part of golf, and for him to come all the way back and for him to win and be as dedicated as he is to his family, it’s a story that — you just have to wrap your heart around it because of the struggles. We can all relate to his struggles. to fight through it and for Anthony to get to where he is, from the bottom. which he was in, it’s something that, like I said, you just have to wrap your heart around.”
Kim’s comeback resonates with Woods because much of what Anthony Kim said Sunday, soaking in the celebratory soda, sounded like what Woods said after he won the 2019 Masters to complete one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.
Their struggles are different. And yet their messages were the same as their motives.
“Don’t walk away,” Kim said Sunday of his message to the people he wants to inspire. “That’s it. Don’t go away.”
“You never give up,” Woods said in 2019 at the winner’s press conference at Augusta National. “That’s a clue. You always fight. Just giving up is never in the equation.
“Just keep fighting. That’s just part of the deal. We wake up every morning and there are always challenges ahead of us, and we keep fighting and we keep making it.”
There was Kim on Sunday, sharing his winning moment with Emily and Isabella, explaining how his daughter, who was born prematurely, changed everything.
“I will tell her that before she came into this world, I didn’t feel any purpose in my life,” Kim said. “No matter if you have a lot of money, if you have a lot of success in your life, you can still feel lonely and feel like the world is against you, and it’s in your mind because I had a lot of people rooting for me. Obviously you saw there how many people were rooting for me. I just want her to know that no matter how bad your day is, if you don’t keep fighting.”
In 2019, wearing his fifth green jacket, Woods, who at one point questioned whether he would be able to play again because of debilitating back problems, credited his daughter, Sam, and son, Charlie, for getting him back to the top of the mountain.
“It means the world to me. Their love and support, I just can’t tell you how much it meant to me throughout my struggles when I was really struggling to move,” Woods said. “Just the contagiousness of their happiness; you know, I was having a hard time physically. There were a lot of times where I really couldn’t move, and that in itself is hard. Just to have them there, and then now to see them win their Pops, just like my Pops before I won here, is pretty special.”
A lifetime ago, Tiger Woods was on top of the golf worldand it looked like Anthony Kim was rising to meet him. A combination of back injuries and personal issues caused Woods to spend 11 years between majors, sometimes only making it a few times each season. Injuries forced Kim out, and a battle with addiction and his inner demons kept him at bay, causing him to hang up his tops for more than a decade and almost permanently end his career.
There was a time when both of their best moments lived only on YouTube. Their legends are kept alive by a mixture of nostalgia, mystique and a natural human desire to hope that the horizon offers more.
But battles, no matter how they are defined, need not be final. The desert may end. Better days may lie ahead. Pain can be healed.
So Tiger Woods made the earth shake for the last time at Augusta National. Almost seven years later, on the other side of the world and in a tournament that didn’t exist when Woods last climbed the mountain, Anthony Kim won again. Where and how it happened is another story that provides context for Kim’s story.
But as Woods can attest, the climb is the important part. This is what makes the final step meaningful. That’s what resonated in Australia on Sunday.
To Tiger Woods and everyone else.
