“I was a big Toy Story fan, so I almost named myself Buzz Lightyear.”
Just call me Tom.
That’s what South Korea’s newest PGA Tour champion prefers to be called, rather than his given name of Joohyung Kim. As the 20-year-old winner of the Wyndham Championship said in his post-round press conference, he came up with the name when he was 4 or 5 years old after his fondness for the TV show Thomas the Tank Engine, based on the famed British children’s book. As he explained in an earlier interview, “I had the whole (Thomas the Train) thing, I had the lunchbox, I had the toys, yeah.”
“It’s just a stubborn me, like you’re supposed to let your parents name yourself and I was like, ‘Nope, I’m to name myself Thomas,’” he said in his winner’s press conference. “I loved the show as a kid…apparently I really loved the train. I was like, you know what, I’m going to name myself Thomas. I haven’t told anyone this, but I’ve actually had a few more names that I could have named myself and I’m glad I didn’t, but I went with Thomas. And as years went on, people started calling me Tom, it was shorter, so I kind of went with Tom after that.”
That begged the question: what were the other names he considered?
“Do you guys really want to know?” he asked. “I was a big Toy Story fan, so I almost named myself Buzz Lightyear. That was a close one; there’s a few more. It’s actually, it’s not an English character, it’s actually an Asian character, but Buzz Lightyear was probably the closest one to Thomas.”
On Sunday, Kim both buzzed and steamrolled the field, shooting 9-under 61 at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, to win going away by five strokes.
“For people to call, ‘Let’s Go, Tom’ today was really helpful and it gave me the energy to keep playing better,” he said.
To borrow the nickname of another Tom, maybe we should start calling him Tom Terrific.
Joohyung “Tom” Kim made $1.314 million in North Carolina for his first PGA Tour win.
It was a record-setting week for Joohyung “Tom” Kim.
The 20-year-old from South Korea entered the week playing on a Special Temporary Membership after his finish at the 150th British Open. He ended the week in the FedEx Cup playoffs, capturing his first-career PGA Tour victory and his seven professional win.
Kim shot an 8-under 27 on the front nine en route to his blistering round of 9-under 61, winning by five shots. He’s the first winner on the PGA Tour born in the 2000s and the second-youngest winner since World War II, trailing only Jordan Spieth at the 2013 John Deere Classic.
Kim’s victory is also special because dating to 1983, he became the first player on the PGA Tour to begin a tournament with a quadruple bogey to go on to win the event.
Here’s a look at the prize money payouts for each player at the 2022 Wyndham Championship, the final regular-season event of the PGA Tour’s 2021-22 season.
[afflinkbutton text=”Tom Kim’s golf ball – $49.99 per dozen” link=”https://globalgolf.pxf.io/b3gnrk”]
GRIPS: Golf Pride Tour Velvet (full swing) / SuperStroke Traxion Tour 2.0 (putter)
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Kim became the first player in the last 40 years to overcome a quadruple-bogey start and win a PGA Tour event.
Joohyung “Tom” Kim didn’t let a quadruple bogey to start the Wyndham Championship bother him.
Instead, he became the first player in the last 40 years to overcome such an inauspicious start and win a PGA Tour event. In doing so, at 20 years, 1 month, 17 days, the South Korean became the second-youngest winner on Tour since World War II – only Jordan Spieth, who won the 2013 John Deere Classic was younger – and the first player born in the 2000s to win on Tour.
“I can’t believe I won with a quadruple bogey on the first,” Kim said. “Hopefully, I’ll never do that again.”
A front-nine 8-under-par 27 by Kim at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, tying the second-lowest nine-hole score in Tour history, propelled him into the lead and he cruised to a four-stroke victory over countryman Sungjae Im with a final-round 9-under 61.
Kim, who goes by Tom, a nickname he was given as a kid after the cartoon, Thomas the Train – “I had the whole (Thomas the Train) thing, I had the lunchbox, I had the toys, yeah,” – carded rounds of 67-64 to head into the weekend at 9-under 131.
He became just the third player in the ShotLink era (est. 2003) to make a quadruple bogey or worse on the first hole of a round and go on to card an under-par score.
“I was laughing,” he said after shooting 67. “It was one bad hole and I just told myself, you know what, I can still get this, I can still shoot under par today and somehow I did.”
Joohyung Kim reacts after winning the Wyndham Championship golf tournament. (Photo: Nell Redmond/USA TODAY Sports)
It didn’t hurt that his putter was on fire. In the first two rounds, he holed 301 feet, 1 inch of putts, marking the most in the first two rounds since the Wyndham Championship moved to Sedgefield Country Club in 2008. But his putter cooled off in the third round. He took 30 whacks with his short stick, ranking 68th in the field in Strokes Gained: Putting. He made just 48 feet of putts in all while still posting a 2-under 68 to trail Im by two strokes.
But the final round was a different story. With a 20-foot birdie putt at the second and 24-foot birdie at the third, he made more feet of putts in his first three holes of the final round than he did in his previous round. And he was just getting started. He sank a 12-foot birdie at No. 4, and 8-foot eagle putt at No. 5 and an 18-foot birdie putt at No. 6. He made 112 feet of putts on the front nine alone.
Kim won twice on the Asian Tour, including the Singapore International earlier this year, and topped the Asian Tour Order of Merit in 2021. He finished third at the Genesis Scottish Open and seventh at the Rocket Mortgage Classic last week. He secured temporary membership after the British Open last month by accumulating as many or more points through the non-member FedExCup points list this season as No. 150 on the 2020-21 FedExCup standings, and He secured temporary membership after the British Open last month and locked up a card for next season at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. How did he celebrate? Being too young to have an alcoholic drink, he said earlier in the week that he went back to his hotel room in Detroit and laid on his bed and stared at the ceiling for five hours.
“It’s been a dream of mine to play here full time,” Kim said.
His win qualified him for the playoffs – he leaped to No. 34 in the point standings – becoming the first special temporary member to win on Tour since Collin Morikawa at the 2019 Barracuda Championship.
“To come out here and to win on Tour as a nonmember and secure your card is really not an easy task and he achieved that,” Im said. “I’m really proud of him.”
Rookie Max McGreevy, who began the week on the outside looking in at No. 126 in the FedEx Cup point standings, shot 65 and finished T-5 and jumped to No. 104 to secure a tee time in next week’s first playoff event in Memphis. Despite missing the cut this week, Rickie Fowler hung on to No. 125, and with Kim accepting his Tour membership, Matt Wallace, who also missed the cut, was the odd man out.
But the day belonged to Kim. Just as talk of a sub-60 round emerged, Kim made a bogey at 10, his lone blemish of the round. He added birdies at 15 and 16 to post 20-under 260 as he became the youngest champion born outside of the U.S. since Englishman Harry Cooper at the 1923 Galveston Open.
All of a sudden, he’s a legitimate candidate for the International Presidents Cup team. International Team Captain Trevor Immelman walked a couple holes with Kim as he played a practice round on the eve of the British Open with Si Woo Kim.
“It was the first time I got to see him and I would love to make his team obviously. I’ve watched the Presidents Cup ever since I started playing golf,” Kim said. “It was actually pretty nerve wracking for me for him to walk a couple holes, obviously you don’t want to shank one in front of your future captain, potentially. Yeah, I was actually hitting it pretty good. I said to my caddie, you know what, I think I’ll be ready for that. If you can hit it good in front of the captain, I think you’ll be OK. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to represent his team in Charlotte.”
To Kim, his victory at the tender age of 20 is just the start of bigger things.
“I still have so much I want to accomplish,” he said. “We bought the car, we just need to drive it, so hopefully I keep pushing that pedal.”
If you couldn’t catch Friday’s action, no worries. Here’s what you missed.
Ryan Moore has suffered through a dismal season. He entered the week ranked 196th in FedEx Cup point standings, had missed three cuts in a row and isn’t even thinking about his long-shot chances of qualifying for the FedEx Cup playoffs, which start next week.
“I am just not even in the frame of,” he said. “I’m so far out of it, it doesn’t even matter at this point. I’m trying to do whatever I can this week. I’m just trying to gain some confidence going into next season.”
But Sedgefield Country Club, where he won the Wyndham Championship in 2009, is a happy hunting ground and he’s found some of that old magic in shooting rounds of 67-68 to share the 36-hole lead at 9-under 135 with Brandon Wu and Joohyung Kim.
“A day like today easily could have been even or so,” Moore said. “Instead, kept my momentum and ended up at 4 under.”
Moore attributes his struggles to an injury to the costovertebral joints, which connect the ribs to the vertebral column.
“It’s nothing I need surgery for, but it’s just a very tricky spot,” Moore said. “It’s where your rib joint like meets your spine. I kind of have some chronic deterioration in there and I basically just keep spraining it over and over and over again, which you can imagine doesn’t feel great twisting and swinging a golf club as hard as I can.”
“There is a course of action, there’s things I can do to kind of help it, I just haven’t,” he continued. “I need a good six, eight weeks off to kind of deal with it and I’ll just try to finish out the year and deal with it and then hopefully have some time coming up here to do it.”
Moore has a friend filling in as a caddie this week, the same pal who was on the bag when he finished T-2 at the 2021 John Deere Classic, his last top-10 finish.
“I’m about to make him start caddying for me permanently apparently,” Moore said. “We keep doing well together for whatever reason, at least on his random fill-in weeks, so it’s good.”
“If you would have told me after the first hole yesterday where I’d be after two days, I definitely would have taken it.”
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Joohyung Kim walked off the 18th green practically cackling to himself Friday at Sedgefield Country Club, the laughter from having left himself nearly 14 feet to save par on the hole and then promptly sinking the putt.
The Wyndham Championship has been an adventurous and amusing experience thus far for Kim, who used a 6-under 64 and another putting clinic during the second round to climb into a tie for the lead with Brandon Wu and Ryan Moore at 9 under for the tournament.
“If you would have told me after the first hole yesterday where I’d be after two days, I definitely would have taken it,” Kim said. “So pretty happy and just kind of laid back knowing I’ve got the weekend to play.”
Kim, a rising star in golf who turned 20 in June, all but face-planted out of the gate Thursday, stumbling to a quadruple bogey on his first hole of the first round. He made an 8 on the par-4 first, with his opening tee shot of the tournament pulled into the primary rough and his next attempt traveling just 48 yards and failing to find the fairway — and so on and so forth.
He rebounded with seven birdies and no bogeys the rest of the way Thursday for a 3-under 67, becoming the third PGA Tour player since 2003 to make quadruple bogey or worse on the first hole of a round and go on to card an under-par score.
Joohyung Kim studies his putt on the 18th during the second round of the Wyndham Championship golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Nell Redmond-USA TODAY Sports
Kim said “all I did was laugh” in reaction to that disastrous start. He began the second round Friday on the back-nine side of the course, and after the turn his drive on No. 1 found a fairway bunker. It was an off-line moment that perhaps could’ve hinted at another nightmare scenario on the hole.
Did that conjure up any unnerving flashbacks of the eight on Thursday?
“I went in the bunker and I was like, ‘Well, here we go, just don’t make a quad,’” he said. “I was like, ‘Let’s just get this on the fairway,’ and I did.”
Kim stuffed his third shot from 119 yards to inside of 2½ feet and parred the hole.
“You know what, this is strokes gained right here, four shots better than yesterday,” he said, joking about Friday’s par. “So most improved on hole No. 1.”
Kim collected seven birdies against one bogey during the second round, with nothing higher than a 5 marked on his scorecard on this day. He birdied the par-4 second hole with a putt of more than 19 feet and poured in a birdie of nearly 30 feet on the par-3 seventh hole.
Through the 36 holes across the first and second rounds, his made putts have covered a total of 301 feet, one inch, the greatest distance over the Wyndham’s first two rounds since the tournament moved to Sedgefield in 2008.
“For me, just try to take it one day at a time, not get ahead of myself too much,” Kim said of his approach entering the weekend. “I’m just trying to enjoy myself and I completely am. So the last two rounds, if I can just play comfortably, just happy, I know I’ll have a good weekend. But I’m just happy to be out here right now.”
