Anthony Kim's big upside was lost on no one, especially not caddies. But it's one thing to have an eye for a talented player, another to land him, and something different altogether to hang onto him, especially if said player is by his own admission young and brash. Kim, "A.K." to his friends and his belt buckle, has gone through caddies like a Hollywood starlet goes through boyfriends. At 22, he's on his third, not counting friends. No one said he's not precocious.
Ron Levin (full disclosure: a friend of mine) was the first. He's well into his 30s, but has been on Tour since age 17, hence his nickname, Bambi. He was on the bag when Todd Hamilton won the 2004 Honda Classic and British Open. He's also got a rep for breaking in young aces, so he got the call to work for Kim at the 2006 Valero Texas Open. Result: In his first Tour start, Kim shot a final-round 65 to tie for second and make $300,000.
"I learned so much from my caddie this week," Kim said then. "He usually caddies for Todd Hamilton and Todd was taking the week off, so I obviously got lucky to get paired with him. I learned a ton where to go at pins and where not to. Even if you have a lob wedge in your hand doesn't mean it's a green-light pin. It was a great learning experience."
The two were just warming up. Thanks to his top-10, Kim got into the next week's Southern Farm Bureau Classic, and tied for 16th. He and Levin worked through all three stages of Q-school, including a win at stage two, and Kim got his card. Life was good.
"The first two months it was like playing a video game," Levin says. "It was like Golden Tee: 'Hit it here.' And he would. It was awesome."
Momentum continued into 2007 as Kim posted top-10s in L.A. (final-round 64), Houston, New Orleans and Charlotte, but the relationship soon began to sour. As Kim has admitted more than once in recent interviews, he stopped practicing and started partying once he secured his card for 2008. He aimed at sucker pins. He shot 78-83 to finish last among those who missed the cut at the Players. He cut ties with his longtime swing coach. Says Levin: "All hell broke loose."
By the Barclays in late August, player and caddie were on thin ice. Kim had begun to believe he was overpaying Levin, who admits he sought and got a deal-sweetener to leave Hamilton. When Kim four-putted the final green at the Barclays to finish T17 in late August, he fired Levin on the spot. The story got around that the caddie had been fleecing the new guy. Levin says he was being paid a reasonable wage, but he thought Kim was influenced by a conversation he had with two Ryder Cup veterans. Kim told them what he was paying his caddie every week and was laughed at because he was quoting a wildly high sum. Thing was, Levin says, that sum was not Levin's normal pay, it was what he made the week of the British Open to offset his airfare.
All gossip aside, the specifics hardly mattered. For Kim it was time to make a new hire, and he chose Scott Gneiser, a longtime David Toms sidekick. By this time it was September, and Kim, used to the much shorter college season, was burned out. He missed the cut by a stroke at the second stop in the new FedEx Cup playoffs, the Deutsche Bank in Boston.
"I feel like last year it was all a blur," Kim said at the Wachovia last week. "And I didn't learn that much on the golf course.... I went back to the drawing board."
Ironically, Kim found the mentor he was looking for not in a caddie but in Mark O'Meara, his partner for the Merrill Lynch Shootout in December. They tied for eighth, and O'Meara told Kim he had as much talent as anyone he'd seen since Woods. The praise reignited Kim's flame, and he resumed practicing.
