Anthony Kim reveals 'dark place' before LIV homecoming
Rory preaches 'sustainability' and ANWA tees off at Champions Retreat
Anthony Kim returned to LIV after 12 years in exile. (Chris Trotman/LIV Golf)
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Meanwhile, AK is about to return to the stage for the first time in America …
Anthony Kim has been through some things. What, exactly, remains unclear but if you see the video of his interview with David Feherty and watched any of his first two tournaments with the LIV Golf League, the one-time phenom looks different.
His face is puffy and it appears a few extra pounds have found their way onto his rather smallish frame from the time we last saw him back in 2012, when he withdrew from the Wells Fargo Championship after just one round due to an Achilles injury.
Kim, now 38, had won three times on the PGA Tour and once made 11 birdies in a single round at Augusta National, setting a Masters record. He starred on the 2008 — 2008! — U.S. Ryder Cup team as well as the 2009 Presidents Cup.
But after a series of injuries took their toll, Kim more or less vanished following that 2012 WD in Charlotte and he achieved somewhat mystic status. Like golf’s version of Big Foot. Reports would at times surface about his whereabouts and his possible return to golf — allegedly complicated by a lucrative insurance policy he had cashed in the case of injury.
Kim would not disclose details about that in his interview with Feherty, which LIV Golf promoted to run on its LIV Golf Plus app. The interview was lacking in specifics as Kim noted he is working on a documentary.
But he did say he had been in a “dark place” and discussed various addictions and compulsive behavior, although he didn’t go into detail. Sports Illustrated did a recap of the video on Tuesday.
“I’m not going to lie, I was around some bad people,” Kim told Feherty. “People that took advantage of me, scam artists. And when you’re 24 or 25 — even 30 years old — you don’t realize the snakes that are living under your roof.”
Kim said he’s shed “98 percent” of the people who were around him at that time and spoke often of his wife, Emily, and their daughter, Bella, whom he said changed the way he views the world.
The former Oklahoma golfer signed with LIV Golf last month after barely playing at all over the past decade. He finished last by 11 shots in his much-anticipated debut as a league wild-card player in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and then did moderately better the following week in Hong Kong, shooting a final-round 65. He then missed the cut at an Asian Tour International Series event in Macau.
This week, he plays his first domestic event at the LIV Golf Miami event at Doral.
Rory: ‘There needs to be a correction’
Rory McIlroy reiterated his desire to see the worldwide game of golf come together, saying that the current situation is “unsustainable” and that he has a hard time coming to grips with the idea that he’ll be competing against the likes of Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka only in the major championships.
McIlroy, 34, who once was a staunch critic of LIV Golf, has softened his stance in the wake of last summer’s controversial and blind-siding “framework agreement” as well as the move of Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton — his European Ryder Cup teammates — to LIV Golf earlier this year.
“We’re probably still quite a long ways from it, but I would hope that in the future that we can get there, unify the game and get the best players back together again,” McIlroy said in an interview with Golf Magazine. “It sucks as a competitor that I only get to see and compete against some of those guys four times a year, because ultimately they do have some of the best players in the world that are playing some really good golf.
“To not see the very best players in the world together more often, I think, is a shame for the overall game of golf and for fans that want to watch the pro game around the world.”
McIlroy last year resigned his position as a player-director on the PGA Tour Policy Board, which recently met with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the sovereign wealth Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, which backs LIV Golf.
The PGA Tour has since entered into an agreement with the Strategic Sports Group to provide up to $3 billion in private equity funding for the new PGA Tour Enterprises. In theory, a deal with the PIF would bring further investment while also bringing some clarity to the overall game.
“There needs to be a correction,” McIlroy said. “I think what’s happening is not sustainable right now, so something needs to happen to try to bring it all back together so we can all move forward so we don’t have this division that’s sort of ongoing.”
ANWA 36-hole road to Augusta begins
The fifth Augusta National Women’s Amateur tees off today with the first of two rounds at Champions Retreat in Evans, Georgia. The top 30 scorers and ties after 36 holes qualify for the final round on Saturday at Augusta National.
The ANWA has become exactly what its founder, Masters chairman Fred Ridley, intended for it to be when he launched it — the Masters of women’s amateur golf. Top female amateurs were originally forced to choose between playing at Augusta or accepting an invitation into what was once known as the Dinah Shore, the LPGA’s first major of the season now called The Chevron Championship. Some players, like Sweden’s Frida Kinhult, picked the major in 2019 (where she missed the cut) instead of the inaugural ANWA and never did get the opportunity to compete at Augusta National.
That decision (and Kinhult’s apparent regret) influenced other Swedes like current World Amateur Golf Ranking No. 1 Ingrid Lindblad to not make the same mistake. Lindblad, a graduate student at LSU, will be playing in her fourth ANWA this week and will be considered one of the favorites having twice finished one shot off the winning ANWA score in 2021 and ’22.
WAGR No. 1 Ingrid Lindblad practices Tuesday at Champions Retreat. (Chloe Knott/ANWA_
The best women’s amateurs no longer have to make any choices, as the LPGA surrendered the week to ANWA and moved the Chevron to later in April (and to Texas). You can’t fight Augusta National.
Lindblad and her LSU teammate Latanna Stone were featured by Scott Michaux in GGPWomen this week. Stone, the runner-up in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur, shared runner-up with Lindblad in 2022 behind champion Anna Davis and backed that up with a T8 last year.
“Champions Retreat is a lot tougher than Augusta.” — Ingrid Lindblad
Both LSU fifth-year players said the real trick to success in the ANWA is getting through the first two days at Champions Retreat, where the nine holes designed by Jack Nicklaus (Bluff) and Arnold Palmer (Island) present a more difficult challenge that anything that awaits the survivors at ANGC.
“I think that it’s definitely harder than Augusta,” said Stone of Champions Retreat, where she’s managed to get through twice in a cumulative score of even par. “It’s not an easy course to play.”
“I actually think Champions Retreat is a lot tougher than Augusta,” said Lindblad, who missed the cut last year. “When they put the easier hole locations at Augusta, they’re really accessible. … But that’s not the case of Champions Retreat. You’ve got the firm greens, kind of big greens. It’s not an easy course.
“That’s why literally anything can happen … that last day at Augusta. You don’t have to walk in the last group. You can go out and shoot a couple under and be up there.”
This fifth ANWA features a 72-player field – representing 18 countries and six continents –equally split between 36 players from the United States and 36 international players. Megan Schofill — Anna Davis’ teammate at Auburn — is the top-ranked American at No. 7.
The inaugural ANWA was won by future LPGA major champion Jennifer Kupcho in 2019. After COVID cancelled the 2020 tournament, Japan’s Tsubasa Kajitani won a playoff against Emilia Migliaccio in 2021 and then 16-year-old Davis won in 2022. Last year featured world No. 1 Rose Zhang putting a bow on her storied amateur career with a playoff victory at Augusta National over Jenny Bae.
The entire field will get to play a practice round at Augusta National on Friday before the top 30 and ties compete in the final round Saturday at ANGC. The Golf Channel (first two rounds) and NBC/Peacock will have the television coverage of the event.