Tom Kim salutes the crowd at the 2024 Presidents Cup. | Photo by Vincent Ethier/Getty Images
Ahead of this week’s Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas, defending champion Tom Kim commended the PGA Tour’s current structure.
Maybe it’s because he has won the Shriners Children’s Open two years in a row. Or perhaps it’s because Tom Kim is only 22 years old—a man whose energy is comparable to the Energizer Bunny, as he seems to play almost every week.
Regardless of the reasoning, Kim applauded the PGA Tour’s current structure and schedule, which has polarized players and fans alike.
“I think it’s such a good product now that good golf gets rewarded,” Kim said ahead of this week’s Shriners Children’s Open on Tuesday.
“Good golf—you’re able to take three to four months off and not worry about anything. Bad golf—you got to pick your butt up once the Playoff starts and try to play well in the fall.”
The top 50 players from the FedEx Cup standings—or those who qualify for the BMW Championship—earn automatic exemptions into the eight Signature Events the following year. The PGA Tour created these high-purse, limited-field events to ensure the top players compete side-by-side. Not only does the thought behind this appease golf fans and broadcast partners, but it also serves as a direct competition to LIV Golf.
Many players, notably 2009 U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover, have trashed this system, arguing that it does not cater to the rank-and-file contingency of the PGA Tour. This argument also asserts that it divides the tour into PGA Tour-A and PGA Tour-B, with dozens of journeymen jockeying for position among the ‘B’ group outside the top 50.
That includes Kim, who finished the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis ranked 51st in the standings. He ended his final round with three straight sixes: a bogey and a pair of doubles to shoot a final round 1-over 73. That dropped him outside the top 50, thus forcing him to play on the PGA Tour Fall this autumn. The top 10 finishers from the Fall portion, ranked 51st to 60th in the FedEx Cup standings, qualify for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Genesis Invitational, the first two Signature Events of the season.
(Of course, it’s worth noting that Kim’s collapse in Memphis opened the door for Keegan Bradley to finish at 50 on the number. Bradley then went on to win the BMW Championship the following week, going from worst to first, and he eventually played his way onto the Presidents Cup team. Bradley then clinched the winning point for the Americans.)
Photo by Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images
Tom Kim speaks after his 2023 Shriners Children’s Open win.
“I had a lot of things on the line this year,” Kim explained.
“I think that’s why maybe some consistent parts of my games were a little bit off. It wasn’t just golf. A lot of outside stuff played into it. I think 2024 was a big learning step in my career. I was dealt with some tough situations, and I thought I handled it as well as I could have.”
Kim arrived at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson in early May, ranked 82nd in the FedEx Cup standings. He needed to play well during the following weeks to qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs, let alone next year’s Signature Events, as only the top 70 players now make it to Memphis for the first playoff event.
He proceeded to play in nine straight events, a preposterous and grueling schedule for anyone. His best finish during that stretch came at the Travelers Championship, where he lost to Scottie Scheffler in a playoff. He also tied for fourth at the RBC Canadian Open in early June.
The move to play as much as he did ultimately paid off, as Kim finished June ranked 39th in the standings. A missed cut at The Open did him no favors, and then, three weeks later in Memphis, plenty of players, such as Bradley, passed him by, leaving him on the outside looking in.
“It sucks to finish 51st, but from about I was before that, I couldn’t do anything better,” Kim said.
“I played as much as I could have and prepared as much as I could have. I actually played really well, and I felt like I made nine or ten changes before I started that nine-week stretch. So making changes and playing nine weeks in a row was really difficult. I felt like I put my head down and got to work. Definitely trended very well at the end of the year.”
Now he has a title to defend at TPC Summerlin, and should he go on to win for a third straight season—thus becoming the first player to do so since Steve Stricker won the John Deere Classic in 2009, 2010, 2011—Kim will have no problem making it to the first two Signature Events next season. It’s still a tall task. But at least he has no complaints about the schedule. He only has to focus on himself.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
