With a pro career that has spanned over 20 years, Sean O’Hair has been up-close-and-personal with some of the game’s greatest players, including Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els.
But there is one person O’Hair played alongside who O’Hair feels never reached his seemingly limitless potential: Anthony Kim.
In an appearance on this week’s episode of Subpar, O’Hair told hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz that Kim was not only an incredible talent, he also had a knack for rising to the occasion when he needed to.
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“AK had swag, man,” O’Hair says. “He was another guy, I think he was a little misunderstood. Not that I was boys with him, there were things that he would do that I didn’t necessarily appreciate, but I think he was misunderstood as a person. I think he’s one of those complicated cats that had insane talent. Insane talent. In my opinion, there was not a doubt he was going to be a Hall of Famer. And I don’t know exactly what happened there, but it’s unfortunate that he’s not playing because I think golf would have benefited from Anthony Kim playing golf.”
O’Hair went on to discuss the 2009 Presidents Cup team that he and Kim were a part of.
“I think he was the best player of that Presidents Cup team in ’09, for sure,” O’Hair says. “And he was one of those guys, he loves that controversy, and he just feeds off it. He would go put his headphones on and sit by himself on the couch and be anti-social, and certain people on the team would say certain things, and I know guys on the International team were talking s—. And he’d go out there and whoop ’em. I mean, he would give ’em a shellacking.”
The U.S. won that 2009 Presidents Cup 19.5 to 14.5, and Kim went 3-1-1 — including a 5 and 3 singles victory over Robert Allenby.
You can listen to O’Hair’s full Subpar interview below.