Put aside, just for a moment, the LIV Golf-PGA Tour’s subtext of perpetual scuffling. Try not to think about the posturing and skepticism that accompanies virtually every LIV story. Focus, just for a second, on the simple facts:
Anthony Kim won a golf tournament. Against Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau. In 2026.
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Kim, one of sports’ true prodigal sons, claimed LIV’s Adelaide event in Australia on Sunday, riding a final-round, nine-birdie 63, turning a five-shot deficit into a three-shot victory. If nothing else — if Kim’s story goes no further than this right here — it’s a pretty incredible comeback for a guy who briefly ruled the golf world, then literally disappeared for more than a decade.
Every so often, golf produces one of these back-to-the-mountaintop stories, when a name from the past has a late-career week of their lives. Think Jack Nicklaus at the Masters in 1986, Tom Watson (almost) at the Open Championship in 2009, Tiger Woods at the Masters in 2019, Phil Mickelson at the PGA Championship in 2021. Everything comes together for one weekend, past meeting present, and it’s remarkable to see.
Obviously, Kim’s victory doesn’t have anywhere near that historical resonance; about the only thing Adelaide and Augusta National have in common is a starting letter. But Kim’s first professional win in nearly 16 years is an impressive story of facing down the demons of addiction and injury.
It’s tough to remember now, but for a brief moment, Kim’s popularity in golf was second only to Woods — and Woods’ personal scandals erupted right as Kim was playing his best golf. Before Scottie Scheffler, before Brooks Koepka, before Jordan Spieth, before Rahm and DeChambeau, before Rory McIlroy had won a single tournament, there was Kim. He went toe-to-toe with Tiger, he hung with Michael Jordan, he was a SportsCenter darling back when SportsCenter was, well, the center of the sports universe.
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Scanning leaderboards from Kim’s prime 2009-10 era feels like looking at faded family pictures in a scrapbook. There’s only one player from Kim’s most recent win, the 2010 Shell Houston Open, still in the top 20: ageless wonder Justin Rose. The tee sheet at Kim’s most recent Masters, 2011, included Ernie Els, Mark O’Meara, Craig Stadler and Watson.
But after suffering an Achilles injury in 2012, Kim stepped away from the game. And not in the “showing up on NBA sidelines and ESPN red carpets” kind of way. No, he flat-out vanished for more than a decade. Rumors of Kim surfaced here and there — he was playing golf with buddies in Oklahoma, he was keeping in shape in California, he hadn’t touched a club in five years — but no one managed to get even a picture of Kim, much less his story.
“I was around some bad people,” Kim said in 2024. “People that took advantage of me. Scam artists. When you’re 24, 25, even 30 years old, you don’t realize the snakes that are living under your roof.”
That’s why Greg Norman’s dramatic 2024 reveal of Kim as a new LIV addition caused such a ripple in certain segments of golf fandom. Kim was once the coolest dude possible, the heir to Woods, the herald of a new era of golf. What would he have left after so many years away from the game?
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Not much, to start. He failed to earn even a single point in his first two seasons on the tour, and was relegated. That could have been the end of his story, but he managed to place third in LIV’s Promotions Event, posted a T22 in the first tournament of the season … and now this. A win is a win, especially when two of the world’s best are in your final grouping.
It’ll be interesting to see how the golf establishment views this victory. LIV players, as expected, have rallied around Kim. European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald was one of the first non-LIV players to praise Kim’s achievement, unsurprising given that it occurred in the middle of the night for America:
For LIV, this is undoubtedly the most significant victory in the tour’s history. This story will break wide in a way that, say, Rippers GC’s latest team victory at Adelaide won’t. The presence of Rahm and DeChambeau legitimizes the win, and LIV’s challenge now is transforming this burst of fans’ attention into longer-term connections.
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For Kim, the takeaway is much more simple. Yes, he’ll rise up to around 200th in the world rankings, but that’s not the real story here. Kim picked himself up from life’s floor, got his life back together, and returned to the top of the leaderboard. Right now, that’s more than enough.
