With three holes to play, Tom Kim looked well on his way to punching his ticket to Castle Pines Golf Club in Colorado, the site of next week’s BMW Championship—the second of three legs of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
He sat at 5-under for the championship through 15 holes, a round that included four birdies and no bogies to that point. He was among the top 50 players in the FedEx Cup standings, the threshold required to qualify for the BMW Championship. Whoever finishes among the top 50 also qualifies for the eight Signature Events next year, a massive incentive for those competing in the FedEx St. Jude Championship to play well.
Kim did not have his best stuff this week, not contending but instead jockeying for position among the top 50. He seemed to have done so, until the final three holes, in which he made three straight sixes. A bogey at the easy par-5 16 served as a harbinger of things to come. Kim doubled both 17 and 18 to finish at 1-under for the championship and 51st in the FedEx Cup standings. He found the water to the left of the fairway on the 72nd hole, which sealed his fate.
“I was actually cruising. A bogey on 16 cost me a lot,” Kim said.
“Then hit a good drive and then another really poor missed shot, just anywhere left is fine and missed it right. I knew I needed something special on the last, and I needed to hit a good drive, but the wind switched, and the wind started to pick up, and it didn’t cover.”
Kim’s unfortunate finish opened the door for Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley to sneak on as the 50th-ranked player.
“This season has just been—it’s just been like this. I’ve played really good golf and then had some tough finishes. I feel like 2024 has really kicked me in the butt. But I’ve gotten so much better. I’ve fought really hard just to get myself many this situation. I was 90-something before we went on this run, and it looks like I’m going to miss by one. But it is what it is,” Kim said.
“I told myself before today that if I didn’t play well, I really felt like I was going to finish 51. I told myself, if that happens, I’ve done everything I could to be inside that top 50 and hopefully give myself a chance at the Tour Championship. But I couldn’t, and I’m going to look forward to a really good off-season because I’m pretty tired.”
Kim has every right to be tired. He played for nine straight weeks between the CJ Cup Byron Nelson and the Rocket Mortgage Classic, a stretch that included a runner-up finish to Scottie Scheffler at the Travelers Championship. Then, over the past month, Kim tied for 15th at the Scottish Open, missed the cut at Royal Troon, and threatened the podium in Paris with a solo eighth finish—all before this week in Memphis. It has been a whirlwind of a season for the talented 22-year-old.
“It’s been a long road. Mentally, I just don’t think I was sharp enough for these past few weeks,” Kim admitted.
“Fifty-one, 52, 50, it’s not going to matter. I’m just looking forward to getting some rest and getting ready for next year.”
Kim will play for the International Team at this year’s Presidents Cup, the tournament in which he gained tremendous notoriety two years ago at Quail Hollow. But he sounded indecisive about whether or not he will compete regularly this fall. The long, hard road of crisscrossing the country—and, in some cases, oceans—seems to have caught up to him.
“This year has been really tough for me personally. I went through a lot of changes,” Kim said.
“I played some good golf and had probably five bad rounds that cost me possibly one top 5, one top 10 and something like this. First round, second round I think I finished 5-over my last few holes. When things aren’t going your way, things aren’t going your way. It shows you in a decent year, this could have been like a 30th instead of a 51st.”
He still kept it positive in the wake of defeat, one that will sting for quite some time. But rest assured that Kim will bounce back in 2025, perhaps with a major victory.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.