RYDER CUP COUNTDOWN: The young Californian rejects 'Tiger Woods' comparisons and enjoys underdog status, writes Lawrence Donegan
ANTHONY KIM is as polite as he is articulate, as self-aware as he is confident in his abilities as a golfer. But more than anything he is different. In a sport where exception is often taken to the most innocuous of questions he will answer them all - even those he considers ridiculous - with the thoroughness and furrowed-brow seriousness of a straight-A student trying to impress a tutor.
"Me? The next Tiger Woods?" says the 23-year-old Californian many believe will take the place of the injured world number one as the fulcrum of the US Ryder Cup side in Kentucky for next week's match against Europe.
"Hasn't there been about 150 next Tiger Woodses?"
Not quite, but Kim's point is well made. The next Tiger Woods has been an elusive figure through the years, principally because the current Tiger Woods has taken such evident delight in crushing the hopes of those who aspired to usurp him. But if the likes of Sergio Garcia or Adam Scott have been put in their place the feeling around the golf world is Kim might not buckle so readily.
"What Tiger has done is pretty much unattainable for anyone else - to be the best golfer of all time," he says. "Personally, I am not buying into all the hype. If I win 14 majors and 70-odd tournaments on the PGA tour then come back to me. Tiger has changed the game; he is part of the reason I am playing golf professionally. He inspired me. There is no next Tiger Woods; there is just Tiger Woods."
Once upon a time, Kim was not so diplomatic, publicly stating that while Woods was his boyhood hero he intended to replace him at the top of the world rankings. This was an ambitious pronouncement from a 22-year-old playing in his first year on the PGA tour.
Yet if Kim had a high opinion of himself he was not alone. Mark O'Meara, who mentored Woods when he first emerged on tour, played with Kim in 2007 and declared afterwards: "I think Tiger's mental game was probably stronger. I think actual technique-wise, swing-wise, I reckon Anthony's swing is better at 21, 22 than what Tiger's was."
The veteran qualified his remarks by saying a good swing doesn't necessarily lead to tournament victories, and this proved to be the case with Kim.
"The problem was my attitude," the Californian says. "I came out on tour expecting to win big tournaments and when that didn't happen straight away I started feeling sorry for myself.
"Professional golf is a lonely place when you are 22-years-old and travelling by yourself. You forget that it's a privilege to be playing golf for a living."
Kim slipped into a spiral of heavy partying and light practising. During his rookie year in 2007 he played some tournament rounds with a hangover and others with one hour's sleep. In the circumstances, he did well to finish in the top 50 of the PGA tour money list. Most first-year pros would have been delighted with that; he was appalled.
"Friends were coming to me and saying, 'You have got too much talent to waste it'. That was a shock to my system," he recalls.
"I sat down at the end of 2007 and told myself if I was going to play golf for a living I was going to give it everything I had so that when it was all over I wouldn't be sitting there thinking 'what if?' "
Kim's new attitude, and more stringent practice and exercise regimes, brought immediate results. He finished third in his opening event of the 2008 season, the Bob Hope Classic in Palm Springs. He followed that with a second-place finish at Hilton Head and then, two weeks later, pulled off a stunning victory at one of the PGA tour's most prestigious events, the Wachovia Championship. His winning score of 16 under par beat Woods's tournament record by three shots.
"To be honest, I was as shocked as most people," he says. "I was so proud of the way I handled myself on the final day (he led by four shots after three rounds). I slept really well on the Saturday night, which proved to me that I was comfortable being in the lead at a big golf tournament, that I had no doubts that I could win. That showed how much I had developed as a player and a person."
Kim followed that victory with another at the ATT National, a tournament hosted by Woods.
"After I won his tournament Tiger called me, and that was one of the biggest thrills of my career," Kim recalled. "He just said he had been watching me and that I'd played great and that I should keep it up."
The younger player needed no second invitation. At the Open Championship the following week he was in contention until the back nine on Sunday, when a few bad bounces and a couple of missed putts ended his chances.
"Paddy (Harrington) played really well that week, but you never know what might have happened. For a while I thought I had a chance. I really enjoyed links golf and the way it makes you use your imagination," he says.
In the end he finished seventh - testimony to his golfing talent, given that it was the first time he had ever set eyes on a links course far less played on one.
"I felt at home. I'm not going to say I can win an Open, but I can't wait to try again."
Kim might not win an Open, though there seems little doubt there will be at least one major championship victory in his future. But for the moment all thoughts of individual glory have been laid to one side as he focuses on this week's contest in Kentucky, when he and his US team-mates will try to end Europe's run of dominance.
With Woods in the side, the US team would still have been underdogs. Without the world number one, they have been given no chance by most judges. Kim, it hardly needs to be said, does not subscribe to such pessimism. More surprisingly, at least for someone who possesses his self-belief, he actually revels in the prospect of being the underdog.
"I'm not the tallest guy in the world, so I've always been the scrappy little guy who has to fight for everything he gets, and I've grown to like it that way. I'm a very competitive person, and I think I'm a pretty good matchplay player. I feel like I can make eight or nine birdies a round - I've done that a few times in the past - and if I can do that then I have a good chance of helping the team."
No one doubts Kim will be a big help to his captain and his colleagues, but will his efforts be enough to win Sam Ryder's trophy next week? Even for him, this is a question too far.
"I'm not going to answer that one. Sorry, but I don't want to give the Europeans any more inspiration than they already have," he says, laughing. "What I can say is that all of us on the American team are going to play as well as we can and let's just see what happens."
• Guardian Service
