Inside the Record-Setting Start to Tom Kim’s Career

Few young players in recent years have captivated the public’s interest as swiftly and fully as Tom Kim, the 20-year-old who already owns two PGA TOUR titles. A year ago today, he was ranked 149th in the Official World Golf Ranking, having spent most of his career on the Korean Tour. Now 15th in the world, the charismatic Kim looks poised to be one of the game’s stars for years to come.

Kim’s achievements have come quickly, and his remarkably young age has required fierce digging through the record books to provide context. Some of the high points:

• With his win in August at the Wyndham Championship, Kim (at 20 years, 1 month and 17 days old) became the second-youngest PGA TOUR winner since World War II. In that span only Jordan Spieth at the 2013 John Deere Classic (age 19) was younger at the time of his first PGA TOUR title. Kim was the youngest PGA TOUR winner from outside the United States since England-born ‘Lighthorse’ Harry Cooper (19 years, 4 days old) won the Galveston Open… in 1923!

• Kim’s win in Greensboro made him the youngest winner in the history of the Wyndham Championship, which goes all the way back to the 1930s. The previous record was held by Seve Ballesteros, who also won the Wyndham at age 20 in 1978, but was about 10 months older than Kim.

• Kim’s first PGA TOUR victory was especially improbable given his quadruple bogey on the opening hole. He was the first player in the 40 years of hole-by-hole tracking to win a PGA TOUR event with a quad or worse on the first hole of a tournament. Even more amazing, Kim won the tournament by five shots.

Before Kim, the last player to win a PGA TOUR event by five or more despite carding a quad or worse was David Graham at the 1983 Houston Open. Graham made a quadruple-bogey 9 on the opening hole of the third round, but a Sunday 64 pushed him to a five-shot victory. Since 2000, 29 players have won on the PGA TOUR despite making a triple bogey or worse. Only two won the tournament by five strokes or more: Kim in Greensboro, and Tiger Woods in his epic, 15-shot romp at the 2000 U.S. Open.

• Kim’s final round that week was of historical note, as well. He carded a 27 on the front nine, one shot off the PGA TOUR record for lowest nine-hole score all-time. Kim is by far the youngest player in PGA TOUR history to record a nine-hole total of 27 or lower. His Sunday 61 tied the fifth-lowest final round by a PGA TOUR winner over the last 40 seasons. The last player to win a PGA TOUR event with a final round score lower than Kim’s 61 was Tommy Gainey, who closed with 60 at The RSM Classic in 2012.

• Kim’s late-summer run made him an automatic qualifier for his first Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow, where he helped lead the youngest team in Presidents Cup history (average age of the Internationals: 28.8). Kim was the third-youngest competitor in the history of the event, older than only Ryo Ishikawa of Japan (2009, 2011) and Spieth (2013). Kim was also part of the highlight of the week for the Internationals, teaming up with Si Woo Kim to defeat Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele in Saturday afternoon Four-ball.

• Cantlay couldn’t escape Kim the following month, either, at the Shriners Children’s Open. They were tied headed to the 72nd hole when a wild tee shot by Cantlay opened the door for Kim to seal his second PGA TOUR win in just over two months. The win made Kim the youngest two-time PGA TOUR winner in 90 years and the youngest player from outside the United States to win multiple times since at least 1900.

• Over the last 80 years, only two players have won multiple times on the PGA TOUR before the age of 21: Kim and Woods. (Seven other players of that description have won once in that span.) Kim won’t turn 21 for more than eight months. The last player to win three PGA TOUR titles before his 21st birthday was Horton Smith in 1929.

• Unlike many young phenoms, Kim is not especially long off the tee. In both of his victories, he ranked 70th or worse that week in average driving distance among players to make the cut. Still, he won by three strokes or more at both the Wyndham and the Shriners. That’s a rare combination.

How rare? Over the last 30 years, there have been 12 instances on the PGA TOUR where a player won by three strokes or more despite ranking 70th or lower in the field in average distance off the tee. Only three players in that span have multiple such victories: Kim and another pair of elite putters, Loren Roberts and Brian Gay. As you can imagine, excellent performance on the greens fueled Kim’s two wins – he ranked first and third, respectively, in Strokes Gained: Putting the weeks of his two titles.

• Kim also didn’t make a single bogey or worse at the Shriners. Over roughly the last half-century, there are only three instances of a player winning a PGA TOUR event without dropping a single shot all week. Lee Trevino famously did it at the 1974 Zurich Classic of New Orleans, winning in an eight-shot rout over Ben Crenshaw and Bobby Cole. Nobody did it again until 45 years later, when J.T. Poston pulled it off at the 2019 Wyndham Championship. Then there’s Kim, who did it a few weeks ago in Las Vegas.

Already running roughshod through the TOUR’s record books through just a few months, there’s no telling what kind of history Tom Kim will make next.