Eight weeks ago, Michael Kim arrived at the WM Phoenix Open fresh off a missed cut at the Farmers Insurance Open that knocked him outside the top 150 in the Official World Golf Rankings.
What has transpired since is a career resurgence. Kim has played in eight straight events, carding six consecutive top-13 finishes, including a T2 in Phoenix and a fourth-place finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. After seven consecutive tournaments, Kim showed up at the Texas Children’s Houston Open ranked No. 52 in the world, just a handful of points away from a Masters invitation before the top-50 cut-off.
Kim and Ben Griffin (ranked No. 53) both made the cut at Memorial Park and seesawed back and forth in the unofficial OWGR projections all weekend. Griffin shot a Sunday 65 to make a late run at jumping Kim to get inside the top 50. But a short missed birdie putt on Griffin’s penultimate hole (the par-5 8th) proved the difference as Kim carded a T32 finish to land at No. 50 on cut-off day. Griffin finished at No. 51.
Per OWGR guru Nosferatu, had Griffin made the 5-foot, 3-inch birdie putt, he and Kim would have flipped spots.
Kim steered his unlikely run to the Masters into the house Sunday despite fighting off massive nerves while playing with a cracked head on his Titileist GT2 driver.
“I made some pretty nervy swings on the back nine there thinking about it,” Kim said after his round. “My driver cracked on, I don’t know exactly what hole, but it was cracked and I was trying to get a replacement on 18, but rules official took too long for it so I just hit it anyway.”
Daniel Berger, J.J. Spaun, Laurie Canter and Stephan Jaeger also finished inside the top 50 on Sunday to punch their tickets to the year’s first major.
On Monday, Kim shared his thoughts on the week on Twitter and explained that he had also cracked his Titleist T200 4-iron early in the week, but he was able to get a replacement.
Kim’s charge to his second-career Masters is a story of golf perseverance and grit — of finding his game at the right time and making sure he didn’t waste the spark.
He will deservedly take this next week off. There’s no need to tee it up for the ninth straight week.
The Master awaits.
