TOUR's youngest rookie enjoying life  PGATOUR.com Correspondent IRVING, Texas -- He hates doing laundry. Absolutely hates it. He loves locker room food. He'd be in there all day long chowing down if he could. He's an Eminem guy -- but his iPod is ecletic. A little 50 Cent, a little Kenny Chesney.  (Feldman/WireImage)
And his immediate plans for any windfalls this season? He's buying his mom a house. Paying the taxes too. Meet Anthony Kim, the youngest rookie, a rap fan and a rapidly rising star on the PGA TOUR. He finished tied for second in his first TOUR event as a professional -- the Valero Texas Open. And after a shaky start this year, he's caught fire, finishing tied for ninth at the Nissan Open, tied for fifth at the Shell Houston Open and tied for third at last week's Zurich Classic of New Orleans. That not enough? Well, he also happens to top the all-around rankings -- he jumped ahead of Vijay Singh -- and despite his small stature (5-foot-10, 160 pounds), he's fifth in driving distance. The stats belie the fact that the last year has been one learning curve after another. Starting with moving to Dallas last fall, getting into a few events and -- most of all -- Q-school, where he finished T13 to earn his card. "I just didn't know how stressful Q school would be,'' Kim said. "It wasn't just the week of final stage, it was first stage, and then you wait two weeks and you go to second stage. You wait another two weeks, and all that pressure builds up and you try and hold it in as long as you can, and after that I needed a break. "So I took quite a bit of time off, tried to do things I wanted, hang out with friends, maybe work out and do things that I wasn't allowed to do for the six week stretch. '' By the time the season started in Hawaii, he wasn't practicing much and, to use his words, things snowballed. He got back on course at the Nissan Open when his coach, Adam Schreiber, flew in for some good work sessions. "Fortunately,'' he smiled, ''everything turned around from that point on.'' He's now 36th on the money list with a bullet, having collected $353,800 last week with that T3. But he knows money isn't everything. A three-time All America at Oklahoma, Kim is two decades younger than some of the players he's paired with. His closest friends out here, honestly, are players like Fred Funk, Kenny Perry and Todd Hamilton. Veterans. Hamilton, who also played at OU, is the youngest at 41. And while he might not share iPods with them -- "I don't even think they have iPods" -- he does text message a bit with Hamilton. "Todd texts me jokes all the time,'' he said. He laughs at those. He pays attention to the lessons and advice the veterans offer including, but not limited to the following: "Save your money, go to sleep early, and keep working hard,'' he said. "Don't let the money distract you from working hard because it's not about the money. You can't think of it as you're making X amount of dollars and you can buy this now or buy that; it's just keep trying to get better and win golf tournaments, and you'll make plenty of money.'' And, no, they didn't advise him to party like a rock star. "I get that from everybody else that doesn't play golf,'' he said, drawing a laugh. "I try to stay away from that. '' When he moved to Dallas, he barely had time to rent an apartment, let alone buy a house. He did buy a new car -- an Escalade, not a Ferrari. "You know, my mom would kill me if I got a Ferrari,'' he said. Miryoung Kim even gave him a hard time over the Escalade. But she has chosen San Diego for that house and her son said he'd do whatever she wants. After all, she took care of him for 21 years, so now, he said, it's time to take care of her.
Kim grew up in tough inner city LA, although the family did move to Palm Springs when he was 15 so he could work on his game at PGA West. They scrimped and saved for his career and his financial focus since turning pro has been to take care of her. At the same time, Kim has an LA street-kid hard edge to him. He doesn't back down and he's not afraid to mix it up when he's in contention. Remind you of anyone? And, yes, the comparisons to Tiger's drive have come up. Unlike a young Tiger, however, Kim has a few areas to work on. A naturally gifted athlete -- he's a good basketball player -- he's also a feel player. Even the No. 1 all-around game has a few weaknesses and his are putting and bunker play. But they're coming around, too. A member of the winning 2005 Walker Cup team (J.B. Holmes was a teammate), Kim got a huge boost last fall when he parlayed a sponsors exemption in San Antonio into a tie for second. He followed it up with a T16 at the Southern Farm Bureau Classic. "(The tie for second) was huge for my confidence,'' Kim said. "I felt like I could play out here, whether I played well there or not. But it just reassured me that I was capable of winning out here without the experience that everyone else has had, or the other veterans have had. So I think it was great for my confidence at Q school knowing that I've played against all these guys before and I could perform under that pressure.'' Kim's been doing just that this spring, but, he said, he's still learning how to live the TOUR life. "It's a little different, no schoolwork, and you get to you have a lot more free time,'' he said. "But it's definitely been a change, and I'm starting to get the hang of it. "In college or amateur golf you play a week, then you go home for two or three weeks, get to hang out with your friends and see if you can't miss a couple days of class (laughter) and try to figure out things to do. "But out here you're on a plane Sunday night if you made the cut, going to the tournament Monday, and trying to find a place to do laundry.'' Did we mention how much he hates doing laundry? The way Kim's playing, he may not need to worry much longer. After he buys the house for his mom, he can invest in someone to do that laundry. |
