Golf’s great prodigy turned mysterious hermit is returning to the sport after 12 years. Anthony Kim has entered LIV Golf and will play in the championship event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, this week as a wild card.
“After retiring from the game years ago due to injury, I am pleased to officially announce my return to the world of professional golf,” Kim said in a press release Wednesday. “It’s been a long time and I’m very grateful for all the highs, lows and lessons learned from the early part of my career.
“I want to compete with the best players in the world and I’m on a mission to prove to myself that I can win again. The next step in this journey begins now and I am excited to give everything I have this season to the LIV Golf League.”
Kim will compete in all of the remaining 2024 LIV Golf regular season tournaments as a wildcard player with the goal of accumulating points in the individual league standings and earning a team berth in 2025.
LIV commissioner Greg Norman teased Kim’s return a video on social media on Monday, and Kim’s presence in the driving range didn’t go unnoticed on Tuesday. Sports Business Journal’s Josh Carpenter took a photo from a placard with Kim’s name on it, and then YouTube golfer Andy Carter posted a video of Kim’s session on Instagram.
Kim, now 38, was once one of golf’s biggest rising stars who won two PGA Tour events and made a Ryder Cup team in 23 years behind exciting talent and a big personality that reached sections of golf fans who often struggled to reach the past. Injuries then led Kim to retire from professional golf at 26, never to return.
Kim has become a cult figure ever since, partly because he was such a popular player with immense potential, but also because of the mystery surrounding his absence. During his playing days, Kim was known as a party guy who had a complicated relationship with how much he loved golf. So when his injuries sidelined him and reports surfaced that he was living off an insurance policy worth somewhere between $10 million and $20 million, it just meant more fascination with whether he could play anymore.
So when Golf.com reported in January that Kim was eyeing a comeback and was in talks with both the PGA Tour and LIV, intrigue soared. Now, Kim is finally back playing with LIV, a league backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which can afford to give Kim a signing bonus to help with the insurance policy, in addition to huge purses at events. Kim is expected to play as a single this week and not in LIV’s 13 teams.
The tricky part is what Kim’s return means and what to expect. Before Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth, Kim was golf’s great young prodigy, expected to take some of Tiger Woods’ place in golf’s limelight. The Los Angeles native played college golf at Oklahoma and played on a winning Walker Cup team before turning pro at 22. Kim won two PGA Tour events at Quail Hollow and TPC Potomac by his second full professional season, becoming the first golfer under 25 to win two tour events in the same season since Woods in 2000. At the end of that 2008 season, Kim was 23, No. 6 in the world and the top rising star in the sport.
With an extremely aggressive style of play and an outgoing personality, Kim became an instant star in a demographic that had not always reached out to golfers. He made the 2008 Ryder Cup team at the age of 23 – young for a spot on that team at the time – and famously dominated Sergio Garcia 5&4 as the US won for the first time in nine years. The following spring, Kim went to the 2009 Masters and broke the tournament record with 11 birdies in the second round. This may have turned out to be his pinnacle.
He never really became the star he expected to be. He won just one more match, the Houston Open, and slowly fell from No. 6 in the world to 24, to 31, to 78 from 2008 to 2012. Injuries were probably a big part of that, but a big part of the memory of Kim probably has its roots in 2008 rather than the overall picture.
He exudes incredible talent. The world has seen it before and now it is my honor as Commissioner of LIV Golf to give this star a chance to be reborn. Welcome back to the LIV Golf family companion too. The golf world has missed you. pic.twitter.com/HNzsXPgFUp
— Greg Norman (@SharkGregNorman) February 26, 2024
Much of his rise came while playing from a thumb injury, which Kim later said he offset and developed tendinitis in his wrist. In 2012, he withdrew from three tournaments and eventually ruptured his left Achilles tendon.
But while his absence meant Kim failed to become the star some had hoped for, it also meant she didn’t have to go through the usual peaks and valleys of a career. The shine eventually comes from all the young players, but being away meant he would be frozen in time as a beacon of potential.
Because of this, however, Kim may have value. It is interesting to so many that fans can tune into LIV to see what has become of Kim. The next question is how long that interest will last if Kim doesn’t play well. That part is up to him.
Required reading
(Photo: Jon Ferrey / LIV Golf)
