Kim's game shaping up after eliminating bad habits
By Brian Wacker, PGATOUR.COM Site Producer
BETHESDA, Md. -- Bad habits are hard to break and good ones are hard to keep, at least for Anthony Kim.
In the ying and yang struggle of being a typical 24-year-old male and one of the best professional golfers on the planet, Kim has experienced as much positive as he has negative -- the other day he said the greatest moment of the year was making it to his 24th birthday.
That's an odd thing to say, but is certainly better than picking his confidence out of the toilet, which is where Kim said it was following a second-round 82 and a missed cut earlier this year at THE PLAYERS Championship.
Since that lost weekend in Ponte Vedra Beach, though, Kim has taken a hard look at himself and his game. He didn't like what he saw very much.
"I was miserable," Kim said. "I wasn't having any fun."
Thursday, Kim was having plenty of fun. How could he not with 62 reasons to smile? His opening round was a course and tournament record and leaves him in the lead at the AT&T National.
It's not as if Kim just rolled out of bed, though, woke up and realized how talented he is; or that this is some sort of one-round wonder like the 11-birdie day he had at Augusta in April. This has been building.
After a rookie season in 2007 in which Kim was fat and happy, he realized he needed to shape up or he'd be shipped out one weekend after another. He did and the result was a pair of wins in 2008, including one here.
Plagued by injuries -- too many to list them all here in fact -- for the first few months of this season, though, Kim fell off the proverbial wagon again and back into the same bad habits, from a poor diet to lack of practice (as in pretty much no practice).
No longer was Kim walking around with his head up, chest out and shoulders back. The smile was gone, too.
Growing up, Kim's idol was Tiger Woods, yet he wasn't putting in the same kind of work Woods was and he knew it.
Congressional Country Club might fit Kim's eye, but he is also more fit these days, having hired his old strength and conditioning coach from the University of Oklahoma, Darby Rich, earlier this season. The two have been working together since the Quail Hollow Championship.
Rich, by the way, used to train Blake Griffin, the top pick in this year's NBA Draft and a player who elevated his own game by becoming the most imposing specimen in college basketball.
Despite a left thumb injury that set Kim back the last couple of months -- he had to re-grip the club on his backswing and stop hitting his usual fade off the tee -- he realized Rich was the kind of no-nonsense guy he needed. The two had worked together at OU and were reunited out of necessity again.
In the past few weeks, it's all started to come together. Kim said that even though the U.S. Open wasn't the result he wanted, that something clicked for him over the last 27 holes at Bethpage. "I got it," he told Rich. "I'm really close."
The extra inches are gone from the waistline and so are some of the bad habits. Kim has finished in the top 16 each of the last two weeks, but earlier this week was one of the last players to be pounding balls on the range as the sun set over Congressional.
"I just know that if I'm working on the right thing, it's going to pay off," Kim said. "Whether it's tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday or next week."
Woods said that Kim has so much talent that it's just a matter of time before he turns it around.
"Some guys, you just have to give them a little bit of time," Woods added.
It appears that time for Kim is here. "I'm finally getting to that point where I feel like I'm going to be able to win every time I tee it up."
For more news and insight from Brian Wacker, follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/pgatour_brianw and for all the latest from the PGA TOUR go to Twitter.com_pgatour.
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