Kim off to blistering start at East Lake, leads by four

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ATLANTA -- The same Anthony Kim who out-Sergioed Sergio Garcia at the Ryder Cup showed up to play at THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola on Thursday.

The joyful 23-year-old wasn't whipping the crowd into a patriotic frenzy like he did at Valhalla when he beat the Spaniard 5 & 4 in the opening singles match on Sunday. But Kim was hitting the same kind of precise shots and holing a bevy of birdie putts in the first round of the final event of the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup.

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Anthony Kim opened THE TOUR Championship with a sensational 6-under 64 on Thursday.

Anthony Kim

Last 10 starts

Tournament Finish Score to par Crowne Plaza Invitational T40 -1 U.S. Open Championship T26 +7 AT&T National 1 -12 British Open Championship T7 +12 RBC Canadian Open T8 -11 Bridgestone Invitational T36 +1 PGA Championship T55 +16 The Barclays T12 -5 Deutsche Bank Championship T27 -7 BMW Championship T3 -12

Kim opened a four-shot lead on Ernie Els, Trevor Immelman and his Ryder Cup teammate, Phil Mickelson, with his round of 6-under 64 on a day when East Lake Golf Club was playing more than two strokes over par. Only one other player, K.J. Choi, who shot 69 on Thursday, managed to break par in the breezy afternoon.

"The course is playing a lot tougher than I had heard about," said Kim, who is bidding to become the first player since Bart Bryant in 2005 to win THE TOUR Championship in his debut. "I thought ... the winning score was going to be around 20 under again, and I don't think it's going to get there.

"The greens are so firm out here you have to take some less aggressive lines and just try to two-putt on some of these holes, and when you do have an opportunity, make a birdie or two."

Kim had plenty of those opportunities on Thursday, too -- eight to be exact.

An bogey on the first hole was just a momentary setback as Kim went on to make birdie putts of 2, 2, 8 and 15 feet to turn in 32. He rolled in a 6-footer at the 10th and another from the fringe, 25 feet away, at No. 11 to continue the surge, then followed his lone back-nine bogey with two more birdies to match his front-nine tally.

"Almost everything in my game was clicking pretty well out there," Kim said. "If you don't drive it in the fairway and you get a dicey lie in the rough, there's no way you're going to keep the ball on the greens out here.

"I hit a shot from 113 yards and we played it as 80 yards. The greens are just so firm that you have to hit the fairways. Everything pretty much went well, so I took a couple aggressive lines and it worked out, and obviously keeping my eye on the ball helped."

When he came to East Lake, Kim had expected the greens to hold well-played irons as had been the case a year ago. Those bentgrass surfaces were extremely stressed, though, due to a brutal summer and have been replaced with Bermuda this year.

"I didn't really know what score was out there," Kim said. "I had heard the greens were really receptive last year, and so I didn't know what to expect. And obviously it took me a couple days to get over that celebration that we had on Sunday night, so I wasn't expecting too much. (I was) just taking what the course gave me today."

Kim joked that he did a lot of "reading" during Sunday night's celebration "so my eyes were tired," he said. He savored the team's victory, as he had done with his first two TOUR titles earlier this year, then relaxed with friends, got some much-needed sleep and watched about 12 or 14 hours of TV.

And now?

"I'm just focusing on this tournament," Kim said. "Obviously it's nice when you walk up to a green and you've got a couple people, 'Nice job at the Ryder Cup. Way to bring the Cup back home,' little things like that. I feel like when I'm happy, having a good time, I'm going to make some birdies.

"So it was a good vibe out there, and definitely looking for this tournament for me to start playing better at this tournament."

Kim, who tied for third at the BMW Championship two weeks ago, was the low Ryder Cupper among 11 at East Lake on Sunday. His teammates were hardly surprised at the former Oklahoma All-American's performance.

"He's a great player," Ben Curtis said. "He's going to be around a long time. He's confident with what he's doing, and he seems to grasp the game pretty easily. He's got everything going for him, and it's kind of similar to Tiger how he handles it."

THE TOUR Championship is likely Kim's final PGA TOUR event of the season. He'll have a lot to reflect on during the offseason -- the wins at the Wachovia Championship and AT&T National, as well as the camaradarie of the U.S. RYder Cup team. He's made great strides on and off the course as he's learned what it takes to win.

"It seemed like everything happened so fast," Kim said. "Last year I felt like a minute wouldn't go by and I could do 80 different things, so everything is flying by.

"I feel like I'm in college again. I'm enjoying being out here. I'm enjoying everybody's company, and obviously playing some better golf. Time has flown by, and I'm just trying to hold on to my seat and not go off track and just keep grinding away."