LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLORIDA | The rust rule doesn’t seem to apply to Sei Young Kim. But don’t tell her that. When asked how she could win the CME Group Tour Championship in November, go to Korea for Christmas and come back in mid-January with the same form she had when she closed 2019 with five top-10s, Kim shrugged and said, “My distance control isn’t where I want to be yet.”
Such is the attitude of a perfectionist. The control has been good enough for Kim to enter the final round of the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions alone in second place, two shots behind leader Inbee Park. Kim’s six-birdie, two-bogey 67 moved her to 11 under for the week, a shot ahead of Nasa Hataoka and two clear of Celine Boutier.
When you’re always looking forward, you often miss some astounding accomplishments. “How many consecutive rounds have you played under par?” Kim was asked. She smiled, shrugged again and said, “I don’t know, six? Maybe seven?”
The answer as of Saturday afternoon is 18, stretching all the way back to October 15, 2019, in Shanghai. Five events, four countries, through rain, wind, smog, early mornings and sunset finishes, Kim has been a model of consistency.
What part of her game has contributed to this streak?
“My ball striking is really good right now,” she said. “And my putting. And chipping. My short game is good.”
So, everything.
“She hasn’t missed a beat,” Kim’s caddie Paul Fusco said after the 67 on Saturday. “You could see it those last weeks of last season, she was moving on an upward trajectory. That hasn’t changed. Everything’s clicking.”
Some of that might have to do with the fact that Kim hasn’t been away long. “I really don’t feel like it was that long a break,” she said. “It was actually too short. I was only away (from golf) three weeks and then I was practicing hard for two weeks and we’re here.”
She’s also continued to modify her setup, patterning herself after some of the old-school players she researches on YouTube. “I watch Ben Hogan,” she said earlier in the week.
It shows. Rather than the modern straight back which puts enormous pressure on the lumbar, Kim settles into a more tucked pelvis and rounded spine, a posture that kept players like Hogan, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Jackie Burke and others swinging without back pain for decades.
“I really like Bobby Jones’ setup,” Kim said. “It still works today.”
“She finds all of this on her own,” Fusco said. “Nobody tells her. She understands her body and she knows what works and what doesn’t. I don’t think a lot of people give her credit for being as sharp about this stuff as she is. She studies it.”
Then the caddie pulled out his phone and shared a video of Kim doing a flying 360-degree roundhouse kick and breaking a board with her heel that was 6inches above head high. “There’s no doubt she’s an athlete,” he said.
No one can doubt her confidence, either. Kim loves playing with the celebrities in this event, saying, “It’s really chill. The music is fun. And the celebrities keep you relaxed. You know that you’ve got people in your group who are pulling for you. When you’re playing with other pros, you’re friendly but you’re also competing with each other. Having the celebrities out there is like having a cheering section in your group.”
Kim will play in the final group on Sunday for the second consecutive event two months and a calendar rollover apart. At the CME in Naples, she needed to drain a curling 31-foot birdie putt on the final hole to capture the title and its $1.5 million first-place check. If she does the same on Sunday, Kim will become the first player in LPGA history to win the official season-ending event in one year and the official season opener the next since Louise Suggs did it in 1960 and ‘61.
Kim didn’t know that either. Not that it would change her approach. The atmosphere wasn’t the only thing chill on Saturday. As the sun set over Disney’s Magic Kingdom, a healthy jog from the Four Seasons Golf and Sports Club Orlando, one player walked away with a slightly slower swagger than the rest. Sei Young Kim could be the player to watch, not just on Sunday, but throughout much of the year.
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