It was nearly two years ago that Anthony Kim, golf’s lost boy, sat in a ballroom at Trump National Doral and began the process of explaining himself.
Where he had been for 12 years. Why he had left. Why he had come back to join LIV Golf.
Kim, the embodiment of cockiness in his shooting-star prime, looked different and it wasn’t just his ponytail. He sounded different.
Subdued. Reflective. Uncertain.
“I’m hoping to help other people understand that life, you know, can throw a lot of s*** at you, but you go through tough things and they make you tougher, and you can make it through,” Kim said that day.
Kim had already made it through to the other side with a wife and a daughter he dotes on, giving purpose and meaning to the second chance he openly wondered if he might ever have.
By winning LIV Golf Adelaide Sunday in Australia – storming from five behind to take down Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau – Kim authored what may be the most dramatic chapter in a life story that has pinballed between mountaintops and trenches.
Until Kim won in Australia, he had essentially faded from public view again. His golf, which could crackle like a summer thunderstorm when he had climbed to sixth in the world in 2008, offered little more than a cold, gray rain.
It’s difficult to fail on LIV Golf but Kim did, playing so poorly that he lost his status on the tour. In two years on LIV, Kim finished inside the top 40 only three times, never managing a top-20 finish.
Whereas a curious fascination had followed Kim through his self-imposed exile, his LIV experience had fostered little more than indifference given his results.
Kim, needing a tour to call home, went to Florida last month and earned one of three wild-card spots offered through the LIV Promotions event, giving the 40-year-old another chance to find what time had hidden. Before teeing off in Adelaide, he joined LIV’s 4Aces GC team, filling the vacancy created by Patrick Reed’s recent departure from the league.
“The only way I get to reach the amount of people I want to reach is by winning. I can talk about my struggles all I want, but if I don’t have the platform, then I won’t reach as many people.”
Anthony Kim
It would have been enough that Kim won a tournament for the first time in 16 years but where he did it – in LIV’s biggest, loudest and most successful event – and how he did it – shooting a final-round 63 to chase down two of the game’s biggest stars – sent shock waves from Down Under.
Kim’s celebrity had endured because of his sudden disappearance in 2012 – social media would erupt occasionally with purported sightings of Kim like he was golf’s version of Bigfoot – but the reality of his return suggested that perhaps his brilliance had been embellished by time and mystery.
But Kim had won three times and finished second four times in a tight PGA Tour window and his second-round 65 at the 2009 Masters included 11 birdies, scorched-earth proof of how good he could be.
The truth is Kim was an extraordinary but troubled talent, haunted by injuries and addiction, and it took losing nearly everything – including his life – to force a change. He accepts the responsibility for making what he called “poor decisions” and credits his wife, Emily, and daughter, Bella, with changing his life.
“I told my wife this: The only way I get to reach the amount of people I want to reach is by winning. I can talk about my struggles all I want, but if I don’t have the platform, then I won’t reach as many people,” Kim said after his victory.
Kim has talked throughout his return about his commitment to improving by one percent every day. Sunday at The Grange Golf Club, it was as if the incremental improvements coalesced into a sparkling 63 in the final round.
He separated himself with four straight birdies on the back nine, throwing fist pumps as the momentum built, later joking that he felt like he hurt his hip in the process.
“Every putt that went in, I felt the struggle, and I was overcoming it. It was therapeutic out there to fight through it and come out on top,” Kim said.
It was a victory showered in joy.
“There’s not many players on tours around the world where you’re trying not to tear up on the last green when they’re winning,” Marc Leishman said. “Being a dad myself and seeing his daughter run out, knowing what [he] and his wife have been through, geez, not too many better stories than that.”
There are parts of the old Anthony Kim that have survived the years. He can still make birdies in bunches, even though he hasn’t done it often enough, and his self-belief has endured.
He had no fear on the golf course in his 20s, Kim said, and he still possesses that audaciousness, though it has been hidden under layers of life.
Anthony Kim’s moment – the one that seemed lost forever – arrived in Australia on Sunday. It was sudden, inspiring and, in the words of Cam Smith, awesome.
Kim said he planned to celebrate by watching the movie “Frozen” with his family then spending a couple of days seeing the kangaroos and koalas in Australia, letting it all soak in.
“Nothing is holding me back,” Kim said.
Top: Anthony Kim comes back from the abyss.
BRENTON EDWARDS, AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES