ST. ANNES, ENGLAND | By any normal rules of progression, England’s Kris Kim should have been playing for the 58th Lytham Trophy last weekend.
He was, after all, the winner – by six shots – of last year’s Fairhaven Trophy, the under-18s event that takes place alongside, and just a few hundred yards away from, the elite amateur championship hosted by Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club, and which is viewed as something of an unofficial younger brother of the main event.
Conventional wisdom doesn’t apply for some golfers, however, and Kim appears to be one of that special group.
So, the 16-year-old didn’t spend last weekend testing himself on Lytham’s famous yet treacherous stretch of bunker-lined linksland.
Instead, the Surrey-based youngster was thousands of miles away, literally and metaphorically, making his PGA Tour debut in the CJ Cup Byron Nelson in Texas and, just as he signed off victory at Fairhaven with a 68, so he opened his account at TPC Craig Ranch with the same score, secured with a chip-in eagle-3 at his final hole.
He then added a 67 on Friday to become the youngest player in the event’s 85-year history to qualify for all four rounds and the fifth-youngest in PGA Tour history. He ultimately faded to 65th place, but the week neatly rounded off what has been a remarkable 12 months for the teenager.
Shortly after that Fairhaven Trophy triumph, Kim was unveiled as the CJ Group’s first amateur golf signing, joining a stable that includes the likes of Sungjae Im, Si Woo Kim and Byeong Hun An (the alliance explains last week’s invitation).
Indeed, ahead of his first round in Texas, he told the media that in Rome he had “got a taste for playing in front of a crowd” and proved it by launching his first-ever blow on the PGA Tour 308 yards into the middle of the 10th fairway.
Apparently unfazed by this elevated status, Kim has compiled a season that included a course record at Golf Club de Genève in Switzerland in the European Boys’ Team Championship followed by victories in the McGregor Trophy at Hunstanton and the R&A Boys’ Amateur Championship at Ganton.
His 16th birthday fell on the Saturday of the Ryder Cup, and he celebrated it in style by contributing 3½ points from his four matches in the Junior Ryder Cup, which preceded the main event. After helping secure Europe’s first victory in seven matches, in front of huge galleries on the final practice day at Marco Simone in Rome, Kim said: “I’ve never hit the ball as far as I did today. That was so much fun.”
There was a sense that the experience had left him not only excited but hungry: He’d glimpsed the promised land of fan-lined fairways, and he wanted to return sooner rather than later.
Kim also was emboldened by 15-year-old Miles Russell’s T20 in the Korn Ferry Tour’s Lecom Suncoast Classic last month – and the knowledge that he’d trounced Russell 5-and-4 in the Junior Ryder Cup.
Amid all the excitement, however, some were a little reticent ahead of the first round.
Because while teenage exploits at the Open (for example, 17-year-old Justin Rose’s T4 in 1998) are viewed as romantic tales, most other precocious efforts are viewed with suspicion. There’s a sense that either the golfer is getting ahead of himself or the parents are.
The good news is that Jimmy Byers, who manages the youngster for Trinifold Sports, reports that such fears are unfounded in the case of Kim.
“Kris is not only a wonderful talent,” Byers told GGP, “he is also a lovely, polite lad with a very stable family background, and the importance of that for young kids in the amateur game is massive. Equilibrium in the home is essential because there are so many highs and lows to deal with on and off the course. Kris’s mum and dad provide that balance and will continue to provide it in the years to come. You can see the benefits in Kris; he has that balance. It’s a very rare and incredible asset.”
Byers also preaches reality rather than painting pretty pictures. “Even if he is ultimately successful,” he said, “Kris has ups and down ahead of him. Knowing that, and being ready for it, will prepare him.”
Before flying out to Texas, and while taking a break from his revision for his GCSEs (high school exams), Kim himself acknowledged that, whatever transpired at TPC Craig Ranch, he was merely taking first steps on a journey rather than arriving.
He was also quick to point out that he would lean on his mother, Ji-Hyun Suh, throughout the week and not just for the reasons most teenagers might. She played on the LPGA in 1998 and 1999, and now coaches her son.
“We talk about everything, from dealing with nerves and keeping it simple right through to course strategy,” Kim said. “But she always reminds me that at the end of the day it’s just hitting a golf ball around and whatever you shoot, you shoot.”
During her time on the LPGA, Suh struggled with loneliness and expectations. When she met her husband, Ki Yong Kim, she was playing in Japan and he recognized that she was unhappy. They discussed it, and she decided to quit.
Suh’s experience of tour life and Kim’s empathy have informed their upbringing of Kris and his younger brother, Matthew.
Early on Saturday evening, managers and selectors of England Golf’s boys’ team were sat in the Royal Lytham clubhouse, beaming with pride as the big-screen TV showed Kim draining a long birdie putt in the third round and joking that he should have been outside in the English drizzle rather than over there in the north Texas sunshine. They backed up the judgment of Byers, praising Kim’s grounded family background and personal balance.
Byers co-founded Trinifold with Bill Curbishley, who will provide the unique insight of a man who has managed rock legends The Who and Judas Priest, and produced both the cult film “Quadrophenia” and the rock opera Tommy. You might say that he’s graduated from pinball to golf ball wizards.
At the start of last week, two-time DP World Tour winner Eddie Pepperell addressed Kim’s invitation on The Chipping Forecast podcast. “He’s a star of the future, so to expose him [to tour golf] this early on is a no-brainer to me,” he said. “We saw it with Jordan Spieth all those years ago. The really, really great players? It doesn’t faze them.”
By the end of the week, those words appeared to be spot on.
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Top: Kim is described as "a lovely, polite lad with a very stable family background."
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