Past USGA Champion Kimberly Kim Undergoes Tranformation On, Off Golf Course

Youngest Women’s Amateur champion now focused on school as much as her talented game

By Rhonda Glenn, USGA

Devens, Mass. – Kimberly Kim’s magical summer is a fading memory now. She can barely recall 2006, the year in which she became a child star. The year when she was on top of the amateur world.

In 2006, Kim caused a seismic shift in the record book when she won the U.S. Women’s Amateur, capturing the Robert Cox Cup, a trophy engraved with the names of Glenna Collett Vare, Patty Berg, Babe Zaharias, JoAnne Gunderson Carner, Beth Daniel and Juli Inkster. Kim was 14 years old.

The player that her friends called, “Kim Kim,” was refreshing. Braces adorned her teeth. She giggled. She played what she called, “smash-mouth golf.”

In the 36-hole final, Kim faced Germany’s Katherina Scallenberg, who was 12 years older at 26. Kim didn’t lead the match until the 30th hole. Finally, on the 36th hole, after Schallenberg made a 25-foot birdie putt from the fringe, Kim matched the birdie with a 5-footer and won, 1 up.

Kimberly Kim has changed her priorities and seems to be enjoying competitive golf once again. (Robert Walker/USGA)

“I was shaking so much…I just, like, hit it. It’s like, whatever, just hit it,” Kim famously said. “I was never really a clutch player, I guess. But that was clutch.”

Earlier that summer she had been runner-up in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links. She was the youngest to make the cut in the 2006 U.S. Women’s Open. She fired a 62 in stroke-play qualifying at the 2007 U.S. Girls’ Junior at Tacoma Golf and C.C., a record-tying score.

If you love golf, as Kim most certainly did, it seemed she had a lock on her dreams. She was so young and she had achieved so much, but, she said, “I’d played golf my whole life, so I didn’t really feel young at the time.”

She clinched a spot on a 2006 USA Women’s World Amateur Team that finished a disappointing ninth in South Africa. She sported a nice 2-1 record as a member of the victorious 2008 USA Curtis Cup team at St. Andrews.

Then Kimberly Kim virtually disappeared. She still played, but not as intensely. She still competed, but not as well. Look for her name in most tournaments and you’d have to look from the bottom up, instead of from the top down.

After the trophies were presented, after the cheering stopped and the media went home, Kim was left feeling a little hollow.

“Three years ago, golf was my life and everything revolved around golf,” said Kim, now 17. “More people that I didn’t even know would try to be my friends. My old friends treated me the same way. No difference really, but I think it was that people’s expectations really got to me. And my parents and I didn’t really agree about things.”

The little girl who used to beat balls by the hour quit practicing. In 2008 she didn’t practice at all. Kimberly, who had been home-schooled “just because of golf,” she says, went to a regular high school, Xavier Prep in Phoenix.

“I went to school and my swing went down the tank,” she says now. “I didn’t practice for a whole year, although I played on my high school golf team. Before I was home-schooled I was a straight-A student. Then I went back to school and I really had to work hard.”

Kim also wanted to experience life beyond the golf course. She wanted to do some of the things she felt she’d missed.

“Before, I probably wouldn’t have gone to the prom or graduation,” she said. “So I did that and I went out with my friends on weekends. I enjoyed that.”

Now the Hilo, Hawaii, native is preparing to go to college in September. She’ll attend the University of Denver, a school known for strong academics as well as its nationally ranked women’s golf team.

“I’ll be living in a dorm, but I’m not concerned,” said Kim, whose older sister, Christina, attends the University of Colorado in Boulder. “Our parents taught us well, to clean up after ourselves, wash the dishes. And traveling to tournaments you learn to be independent.”

Issues with her parents have been settled because, Kim says, they’ve seen stories about other young athletes in other sports.

“My parents are very cool now,” she said. “They read about one guy who was doing super well, then he was in a car accident and his career was over.”

She’s determined to do well in school. Studying will be her first priority, so she’ll have something to fall back on, and golf will be in second place. She seems ambivalent about golf. Reminded that in the 2006 Women’s Amateur her caddie, Frank Nau, told her to play “smash-mouth golf,” she said, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t know what he was saying. He just told me, hit it here, hit it there, putt it there.”

They’re Facebook buddies now.

Kimberly is struggling a bit on the golf course. She’s trying to remember course management and how to get the ball up and down for a par. But there are signs that she’s on her way back. She recently won the Rolex Girls Junior Championship, a major on the American Junior Golf Association circuit, at Rancho Santa Fe (Calif.) Golf Club.

In this week’s championship, she shot 77 in the first stroke-play qualifying round and was in danger of missing the cut. Kim came roaring in with a 2-under-par 70, and then won her first-round match.

The other day she was packing, basically cleaning out her whole bedroom. “I was cleaning out my closet and saw my medals,” Kim said, “and I thought, ‘I wish I had more medals.’”

The following week in Santa Cruz, Calif., Kim played in sectional qualifying for the 2009 U.S. Women’s Open. She fired 73-70—143 at Pasatiempo and led the field.

By two strokes. She got two medals, one for being the low scorer and another for being low amateur.

“I like competing,” Kim said.

Rhonda Glenn is a manager of communications for the USGA. E-mail her with questions or comments at rglenn@usga.org.