It was a big week for the title of Next Big Thing in a White Belt.
Down in those rankings went one 22-year-old Spaniard with the molten disposition. To be supplanted by a 21-year-old Korean who appeared capable of leaving his emotions back in his locker with his car keys, playing a brand of golf as cool as a 1960s Bond film.
That would be Si Woo Kim, who Sunday was a survivor among victims at The Players Championship, winning this high-gloss event by three strokes, putting up the day’s only bogey-free round and greatly reconfiguring the age limit for being taken seriously.
Count playing partner Louis Oosthuizen, who along with Ian Poulter tied for second, a believer.
“He played like someone who had been doing it for five or six years. Like it was just another round of golf. Never once did he look flustered at all,” the South African said.
Kim became the youngest-ever Players champ, nearly two years the junior of Adam Scott back, way back when he won in 2004.
“I feel like I’m still dreaming,” Kim said through an interpreter. “I never expected that I would win this tournament. I wasn’t doing that well at the beginning of this year. (Only one top 10 finish in 18 events, with seven missed cuts and four withdrawals due to back problems.) But I’m just so excited now.”
And what of Spain’s excitable Jon Rahm — all but granted phenom status as this golf season broke — you ask? He wasn’t here Sunday, having melted down with a brief-career-worst 82 in the third round and excised by a rare Saturday secondary cut.
Maybe he was the lucky one.
For Sunday was one mean mother, treating many of its top competitors rudely. The top of the leaderboard was a precarious place to occupy, a greased ledge barely wide enough to support any but the most nimble.
Of the dozen golfers who began the day at the lead or within five strokes of it, only four broke par. And Kim was the only one in that bunch to dip into the 60s.
The result was a normally wild tournament turned as domesticated as a spaniel. By the time Kim got to the famed par-3 17th island green, usually a scene of great trauma, he possessed a two-stroke lead and a quiet sense of confidence. If he didn’t need a snorkel, he was good.
“I wasn’t nervous at all,” Kim said. “I focused on the middle of the green and that’s where I hit it.”
The fate of the two third-round leaders summed up rather grimly the state of Kim’s competition. J.B. Holmes, who had the distinction of being the only player to go under par for each of the first three rounds, shot 84. His playing partner Kyle Stanley looked like Nicklaus by comparison in shooting a 3-over 75. If only to prevent a debilitating case of the giggles, it was important for Kim not to get caught up in too much leaderboard-watching.
But then, Kim has been making comfortable victory into something of a personal habit. This isn’t, despite his tender years, his first PGA Tour victory. That came in last year’s Wyndham Championship, which Kim won by five. No, he doesn’t like to be crowded.
Over the front nine of the final round, five players claimed at least a piece of the lead at one time or another. But only Kim was capable of compounding his advantage. The Players was Kim’s playground. By his seventh hole, he had assumed a share of the lead and he only gripped it more tightly from there.
“I obviously wanted to try to put a little bit more pressure on,” Poulter said, “but it was tough to get close.”
Especially given Kim’s nerveless scrambling. He missed 10 greens and saved par on them all. Parring out on the back nine was the equivalent of stepping on the gas at tough TPC Sawgrass.
His is a classic story of ridiculous success before its time, one that reaches across oceans and requires no translation. Kim won his first PGA Tour card when he was too young to use it, at 17. He kept coming back and qualifying, breaking through a year ago and taking his talent to a new plateau this week.
The news from the senior flight of the Players Championship wasn’t nearly so uplifting.
Sergio Garcia began the day four off the lead, but his position became untenable early after a bogey-double bogey outbreak on Nos. 3 and 4. He knew it most certainly was not his tournament when his second shot to the par 4 fourth tumbled into an impossible lie in a green-side bunker barely the size of a manhole. He required two shots to escape that baby hazard. A front side 41 was in the making. He finished with a 78, 1 over for the tournament, in 30th place.
Obligatory Dustin Johnson update: The world’s No. 1 on Sunday tied his lowest ever score at a place that has stubbornly resisted him. Johnson shot 68, only his third round in the 60s out of 30 total rounds at TPC Sawgrass. He finished 2 under for the tournament, tied for 12th, his first time out of the top six this year and his lowest finish since a 35th in October’s World Golf-HSBC Championship.
Oh, as a postscript: It’s not only football that troubles the Georgia Bulldogs in Jacksonville. Seven former Dogs were in the Players field, the most of collegiate program. Three — Bubba Watson, Harris English and Hudson Swafford — missed the cut. The other four — Brian Harman, Russell Henley, Chris Kirk and Kevin Kisner — finished a combined 11 over. Only Kirk among them, at 2 under, finished in the red.
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