Of course he was going to stay up Saturday night into Sunday morning. To Jim Renner, the Anthony Kim story – from the electrically good parts to the head-shaking sordid stuff – is personal and he’s never wavered in his answer when people have asked him.
“I never really saw anyone with that much talent,” said Renner.
As someone who was especially easy to root for, a prototype blue-collar kid from Plainville, Mass., who possessed ball-striking brilliance, Renner was a poster boy for the grinding nature of pro golf. A splattering of top 10s in his three years on the PGA Tour (2011, 2014-15), most notably a runner-up to Jimmy Walker at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, proved he had game.
Ah, but Renner can attest to the fine line that is very real in the highest level of pro golf and has no regrets that he didn’t have more time on the PGA Tour. He also considers his friendship with Anthony Kim to be one of his most cherished benefits to his life in golf. So, no, there was no way Renner was going to miss watching the final round of the LIV Golf tournament in Adelaide, Australia Saturday into Sunday.
That Kim at age 40 and more than 5,000 days removed from his last win, the 2010 Shell Houston Open on the PGA Tour, stormed from five back to overtake Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau was unthinkable.
But almost immediately there was over-reaction to the nth degree on social media, folks spewing so much hyperbole and actually putting AK’s win in the realm as Tiger Woods 2019 Masters. Nauseous.
At the other end, others wanted to dismiss the story because it was LIV Golf, a lackluster product since Day 1 that remains equally blah in its fifth season. That’s not exactly fair, either.
Thankfully, Renner, who met Anthony Kim in junior golf and jumped at the chance to be his teammate at the University of Oklahoma, shined the spotlight where it deserved to be. As a heartwarming personal triumph against long odds – many of them self-inflicted, yes, but several of them due to damaging injuries.
“He’s inspired a lot of people with him sharing his journey and being open about his past,” said Renner. “But he is always working to get better. Very happy for him and his family. Cool to see.”
There are a myriad of ways to digest the saga of Anthony Kim, who won only three PGA Tour events in 122 tournaments between 2007-2012. That in itself is not an overwhelming statistical entry (Woods won 33 times in his first 122 starts so, please, let’s keep that part of the AK story in perspective). But with AK, what starts every conversation is the way in which he carried himself and how he opened the eyes of his peers with a sort of panache.
That 2009 Masters, most notably, when Rory McIlroy and Ryo Ishikawa, were with AK in a pairing of three high-profile rookies. In Round 2 that year, Kim shot 65 despite making a double and two other bogeys. “I played with Anthony Kim when he made 11 birdies,” McIlroy once told Smylie Kaufman and you better believe that day stuck with the Northern Irishman.
“I don’t know if he was ultra-aggressive and just didn’t care,” McIlroy once said. “He just went at flags.”
Clearly, Kim had swagger, an unmistakable flash, and the big, wide buckles on his white belts were a huge part of his persona. But so, too, was he a handful, though at first it was somewhat harmless.
“He was like a Labrador puppy; so loveable, but every time you left him alone, he’d make a mess of things,” said Rocky Hambric, who managed Kim in 2007 and 2008.
Later, however, the issues became more serious. The injuries sidelined him; it was the drug and alcohol abuse that stymied him, however. Living your young life surrounded by a posse is a recipe for disaster.
His last PGA Tour tournament was the Wells Fargo in 2012. The third of only three Masters appearances was in 2011. Rarely after Kim’s 25th birthday (June 19, 2010) did golf writers report on Kim’s golf; stories solely revolved around a mythical figure who was a recluse. He was spotted here, seen there, rumored to be wherever.
Now the assortment of serious injuries – neck issues, shoulder, wrist – legitimately sidelined his career, but it was Kim’s decision to cash in on massive amounts of insurance money, well north of $10m, that offered the biggest roadblock to any chance of a comeback. That’s because policies were paid contingent upon Kim staying away from professional golf.
The insurance component remains a very real layer to the AK story. If he was ever going to make a comeback, that money had to be reconciled.
LIV Golf offered him a lifeline of the highest order in 2024 and after two lackluster seasons that made the comeback look fruitless, he has finally broken through.
That is great news to so many of the friends and peers along the way who shared space in this world and root passionately for Anthony’s success.
Still, there is that component should insurers be looking for repayment.
It might not dull the shine to AK’s victory in Adelaide (a $4m prize, though Australia is a progressive tax country that feast on those big wins), but it’s there.
For his part, Kim focuses on his new life with wife Emily and 4-year-old daughter Bella, his sobriety, and his quest to possibly serve a useful purpose. “I’d like to help people,” he said. “My goal is to inspire the people who are struggling.”
Back in a simpler time, long before NIL and Signature Events and LIV Golf, Anthony Kim came up to play in the Northeast Amateur at Wannamoisett CC in Rumford, R.I. There was an invite to visit Manchester Lane, the practice area and test facility with the Acushnet Co. and Jim Renner vividly remembers how “the important people showed up just to see him.”
They were not disappointed.
“He turned it on and still to this day it’s the best ball-striking session I ever saw,” said Renner. “It’s tough to describe it, but it was just another level. There’s another level on the Tour and (Anthony) was in that very small group.”
He should have been there for years. But that’s his bad.
That he’s resurfaced to the delight of so many friends, supporters, and fans – and there are a lot of them – is also on him. In a very good way.
