Everyone Loves Tom Kim

Name another player who’s accused of being a sore loser, caught trashing a green in frustration, and still has broadcasters fighting over who gets to call him their favorite. That’s Tom Kim. He’s not beloved because he’s perfect. He’s beloved because he’s never once pretended to be, and Sunday at the Scottish Open, three years of that honesty finally paid off.

Tom Kim didn't grow up playing at some fancy country club. His real name is Kim Joo-hyung, and he was born in Seoul, South Korea. His dad was a golfer too, so as a kid, Tom moved around a lot — Australia, the Philippines, Thailand — basically wherever there was a tour to play. He turned pro at 15. Fifteen. Most kids that age are still worried about middle school homework, and Tom Kim was already grinding on mini-tours trying to make a living. By 17, he was already the second-youngest winner in Asian Tour history. Oh, and "Tom" isn't even his real name — it's a nickname he got from Thomas the Tank Engine as a little kid, and it just stuck forever.

In August 2022, when Tom Kim was only 20, he won the Wyndham Championship. And he almost didn’t — he started the tournament with a quadruple bogey, which is about as bad as it gets on the first hole. He still won, closing it out with one of the best final rounds anyone had ever seen.

Then, a few weeks later, at the Presidents Cup, he basically became the star of the whole event. He sank a huge putt, did this big fist pump, and the broadcasters lost their minds. Justin Leonard, right there on live TV, said, “How can you not love this man right here?” Then Paul Azinger, who’s seen basically every golfer ever, said, “I think he’s my new favorite player.” That’s not normal. Broadcasters don’t just say stuff like that.

Then that same October, he won again — the Shriners Children’s Open. That made him only the second player ever to win twice on the PGA Tour before turning 21. The only other guy to do that? Tiger Woods, back in 1996. A whole year later, he won that exact same tournament again, which only one other golfer in history had ever done.

If you were watching golf back then, you remember exactly how this felt. Everyone was talking about this kid, including me. I felt like he was about to be one of the biggest names in the sport for the next ten years.

Then Things Got Messy…

At the 2024 Presidents Cup, Tom Kim told reporters he thought some American players had crossed the line — cursing at him and his partner Si Woo Kim during a match. The players he was talking about denied it completely. Tom Kim ended up apologizing the next day, saying, “I didn’t mean it to go in such a negative way. If it did, I just said I’m sorry.”

Then a year after that, he lost his cool at the FedEx St. Jude Championship and banged up the 12th green after missing a short putt. He had to apologize for that one too. “I was clearly wrong,” he said. And just like that, some of the same people who loved him started calling him a sore loser instead.

Around the same time all that was happening, his longtime caddie Joe Skovron left to go work for Ludvig Åberg. And Tom Kim just... stopped winning. For two whole years — 2024 and 2025 — he had exactly three top-10 finishes combined. Zero wins. Not one top-25 finish in any major. That’s 1,001 days between wins.

If you were a fan back in 2022, you know exactly what those years felt like. You found this kid who fist-pumped his way into your heart, who was matching Tiger Woods records, who felt destined for something huge. And then... nothing. You’d check the leaderboard out of habit, not really expecting to see his name near the top anymore. It’s a weird feeling, watching someone you believed in just kind of disappear.

Then Sunday happened. At the Scottish Open, Tom Kim shot a bogey-free 64 in the final round and won the whole thing by two shots. He’d been near the lead the entire week, and on the last day, when it mattered most, he played better than anyone else in the field. And he cried. Not fake tears for the cameras — real ones, the kind that come out when you’ve been holding something in for three years and it finally has somewhere to go.

And that’s really the whole Tom Kim story. He’s lost his temper on a green. He’s had to say sorry more than once. But he’s also the same guy who made two grown broadcasters fight over who liked him more, just because of how he played the game and who he is.