Sungjae Im hits his tee shot on Sunday on the 1st hole at East Lake Golf Club.
Getty Images
Sungjae Im first set a PGA Tour record. Then, he maybe carded another personal one.
Im, on the par-3 2nd at East Lake Golf Club, hit his tee shot to 21 feet, hit his putt, then watched as his ball fell over the front of the cup during Sunday’s final round of the Tour Championship. He pumped his fist three times.
No player, in 41 years of tracking, had now made as many birdies as Im had in a PGA Tour season. To celebrate, the normally stoic Im did something he likely hadn’t done in his 23 years of living. Three fist pumps from Im? Though Labor Day weekend doesn’t traditionally have fireworks, consider this an explosion.
Im would tack on birdies on 10, 12, 14 and 18, and he’d finish with 498 birdies, five more than Steve Flesch’s previous mark, set in 2000. Since the Tour began tracking birdie totals in 1980, only three players have had 480 birdies or more in a season — Im this year, Flesch, Vijay Singh in 2004 (484) and Im in 2019 (480).
Im, no doubt, was helped both by the fact that this is the first — and likely only — PGA Tour “super season,” with 50 events, starting with the U.S. Open last September, and the fact that Im is a super workhorse — he’s played 127 rounds over 35v tournaments. Still, one does not make birdies just by entering an event.
“Who knows if that’ll be the Joe DiMaggio record on the PGA Tour,” announcer Dan Hicks said on NBC’s broadcast, referencing baseball’s record 56-game hitting streak.
A look at the birdie leaders on the PGA Tour since tracking began in 1980:
Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.