Gentlemen, start your hyperbole.
Anthony Kim is ready to challenge Tiger Woods right now. Kim is 10 years younger than Woods, and golf gets a new superstar every decade or so. Only two players have a sub-70 scoring average at 7,442-yard Quail Hollow Club, Kim and Woods.
For those nuggets we can thank the TV wags who won't begin to be proven wrong or right until next month's U.S. Open, at the earliest, when Woods is scheduled to return from arthroscopic knee surgery. But even players got into the act at Quail Hollow.
"[He] played extraordinarily good," said Jason Bohn after Kim beat him 66-72 in Saturday's third round. "Almost Tiger-esque."
In the absence of defending champion Woods, Kim — all together now, only 22 years old — demolished a strong field at the Wachovia Championship on Sunday. He opened up a seven-stroke lead before two late bogeys cut the final margin of victory to five shots over Ben Curtis. Bohn finished third, six back.
The Tour's youngest winner in six years, Kim earned $1.152 million.
"I'm a little bit numb right now," he said, "but that walk up 18 was the best feeling in my entire life, and I'll never forget that feeling. I had chills going up and down my spine. I want to recreate that as many times as possible now, so I'm going to really work hard."
Kim's rise follows the arc of other future stars, archetypal can't-miss kids whose skills are plainly obvious, but whose D.O.B. (date of breakthrough) is harder to pinpoint.
Tiger Woods blew his first chance to win on Tour, losing the 1996 Quad City Classic.
David Duval threw away several opportunities, one of them when he was still playing for Georgia Tech, before breaking through at the 1997 Michelob Championship.
And Rookie of the Year favorite Kim did little more than keep his card in 2007.
Behold the Tour's learning curve.
"The Tour is a lot different than college," Kim said at a Nike Golf event during the week of the 2007 Tour Championship, a tournament he hadn't qualified for. "I mean, I'm out here hanging out with Kenny Perry, and he's got a daughter who's older than I am."
With the exception of Woods (where have we heard that before?), inconsistency haunts the 20-somethings. Kim lost the U.S. Amateur Public Links final to Casey Watabu two years ago, but he tied for second at the 2006 Texas Open, his first Tour start.
Sean O'Hair, 25, looked like the next big thing when he matched Phil Mickelson tee-to-green at the Players a year ago, but he missed short putts on 15 and 16 before boldly aiming at the back-right pin on the island green at No. 17. His watery quadruple-bogey 7 dropped him from second to 11th place. "It's hard to make something happen on 17," he said later (no kidding), but he bounced back to win the PODS in Tampa earlier this year. He's cashed a check in just two of his last five starts. Is he really the next big thing? Is Kim? Yes. No. Maybe.
