He once missed 23 cuts in a row. Now he’s playing in the Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Michael Kim stood atop a podium outside the Augusta National clubhouse Tuesday afternoon and smiled at the reporters gathered. The scrum was nothing compared to those commanded by some of the tournament favorites — Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, etc. — but the fact that anyone wanted to chat with the journeyman pro was reason enough to grin.

“I was never really planning on being here,” Kim said. “I’m just really excited, a little bit of anxiousness there for sure, a little bit of anxiety, but can’t wait to hopefully play well and come in future years as well.”

This week is not the first Masters appearance for Kim. That came back in 2019. Thanks to his victory at the previous summer’s John Deere Classic, Kim earned a coveted spot in the year’s first major.

In the moments after winning the John Deere — his first and only PGA Tour victory — Kim spoke about his excitement about the prospect of competing in the Masters. He even let himself dream a bit about the possibility of playing alongside Tiger Woods.

“Hopefully he’ll be out here for a few more years and hopefully I’ll be able to get a good round with him,” Kim said at the time. “Hopefully on Sunday near the lead, because that would be awesome.”

Woods did end up being near the lead the following spring at Augusta National. Entering the final round, he found himself two shots behind Francesco Molinari. After posting a final-round 70, he waltzed into Butler Cabin to collect his fifth green jacket.

Kim did not find himself near the lead that fateful Sunday. He posted rounds of 76 and 78 over the first two days to miss the cut by seven strokes. The only players he beat were well-past-their-prime past champions. As Woods celebrated his latest major victory, Kim was nowhere near the famous club.

Little did he know it at the time, but Kim was in the midst of a slump that was the stuff of nightmares. Leading into that Masters, he’d missed the previous eight cuts. Despite optimism that his game was trending in the correct direction, Kim would go on to miss his next 15 cuts in a row. By the time Covid hit in 2020, his game was in shambles.

“I was in a bunch of little pieces,” Kim said.

The downward spiral continued once the Tour resumed. He missed 13 straight cuts after the restart and finished 248th in the FedEx Cup standings. The following year, he finished 214th and lost his Tour card.

Around that time, as he floundered near rock bottom, a member of Kim’s team reached out to GOLF Top 100 Teacher Sean Foley. He wanted Kim to start working with the renowned coach and wondered if Foley would take him on as a client.

Instruction

“The attraction to working with Michael was he’s very intelligent, he’s a kind person and he’s very gracious,” Foley said. “And also, he was the No. 1-ranked amateur at one point.”

The first thing Foley did was find a video of Kim’s swing from his time competing for Cal back in college. Back then, almost a decade prior, Kim had been the top-ranked amateur in the world as he became the first-ever Cal golfer to win national player of the year honors. But the problem was the swing Kim was playing when he started working with Foley was nothing like the one he’d used during his amateur career.

As Foley analyzed his new pupil’s prior swing, he noticed some major differences. The biggest change, he said, was that back then Kim was predominantly working the ball right to left. Once he got to the PGA Tour, though, he was trying to fade the ball left to right.

“I had kind of gone into a deep dive of trying to kind of hood the face with a bowed left wrist, trying to hold on, trying to hit a cut,” Kim said. “And that’s just a complete 180 of how I used to swing the golf club when I was a kid and when I was in college.”

As the duo embarked on their partnership, they reengineered Kim’s swing to get back to what had gotten him to the top of the sport: hitting draws. At first, they over exaggerated the movements. Day after day, Foley would instruct Kim to hit “massive draws” as they undid all the poor habits that had crept in over the years.

When Kim was younger, he had a flat backswing and active hands near impact. Once he became a pro, though, he started getting more upright and tried to hold his wrist angle through impact.

“We worked on shifting off the ball more,” Foley said. “We had him getting the face more open in the backswing so he had something to release near impact, and then we worked on getting his path more to the right. I just wanted him hitting high, slinging draws.”

The two have worked together ever since, and this week, Kim is back at Augusta National competing at the Masters, thanks to a strong run of play over the spring that included five-straight top-15s. This time, Foley is right there by his side, reminding him to swing like the kid who was once the best amateur golfer on the planet.

“He kind of collected [all the pieces],” Kim said “And made me back whole.”