Sihwan Kim, LIV Golf's Worst Player, Will Make the Cut at the PGA
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Sihwan Kim has been good enough to win two Asian Tour events in the last year and qualify for the PGA Championship.
He’s also been bad enough to finish dead last in four of six LIV Golf events this year and with no result better than 43rd, breaking par just four times in 18 rounds.
So naturally, on one of the hardest courses he’ll see, Kim shot 68 on Friday during the second round at Oak Hill to make the 36-hole cut.
Kim, 34, won the International Series Thailand event last year as well as another tournament on the Asian Tour, then started to have issues with his driver.
Perhaps the highlight—or lowlight—was the LIV Golf Boston event last year where he opened with an 87 and rebounded to shoot 63 the next day. The issues drifted into this year.
"It’s been a two-way miss for four months," said Kim, who was born in South Korea but moved to the United States in 2000 and is an American citizen. "And obviously a one-way miss is a lot easier to fix. But when you start missing both ways ..."
Kim said it got so bad that if he saw out of bounds on one side and a hazard on the other ... he aimed for the hazard.
"You can actually go up and drop it rather having to re-tee," he said. “That’s pretty much how bad it got and how my mindset was at one point."
Kim was exempt for the PGA Championship via a new exemption category called the Federation Ranking as part of the Official World Golf Ranking. The PGA took three players from that list, won from the Japan Tour, another from the Sunshine Tour, and Kim, who was on the Asian Tour.
So far, he’s making the most of it with his best golf of the year. He made five birdies and three bogeys on Friday and added a 68 to his first-round 75 to easily make the cut at 143.
While he hit just six of 14 fairways, Kim hit 12 greens and took just 27 putts.
A former U.S. Junior champion who played college golf at Stanford, Kim has been a pro since 2011, bouncing around various tours. He is part of a LIV team captained by Kevin Na and said Henrik Stenson, who years ago suffered through his own issues with the driver yips, has been a good sounding board as well as one who to help him get through the tough times.
It also doesn’t hurt that there are minimum payouts at LIV Golf. Kim has made $742,500 through six events, having only twice finished ahead of any other players. And since he’s played so poorly, he’s unlikely to remain with LIV Golf after this year; he can be demoted if he is among the bottom four players and can only assure himself a spot for 2024 if he is in the top 24.
"I'm just happy to be there," he said. "I barely secured my card last year and I just thought this whole LIV thing was a bonus for me. The difference in purses is great from the Asian Tour and the card thing is not on my mind."
Although he’s gotten support from other LIV players including Na, who told him not to worry about the team part of the competition, that component has probably hurt him.
A bad round now not only hurts him but his team, which counts three scores each day.
"It’s been a rough three months," he said.
But he’s found a bit of form this week, hitting shots with more freedom and seeing some decent results.
"This is only my second major," said Kim, who missed the cut at the British Open last year. "I’ve been trying to figure out something in my swing and I’ve kind of found it, three weeks ago and trying to go deeper with it. You start hitting it better and your mental game kind of gets better and you get a lot more positive."