For no less than 12 years, Anthony Kim, a precocious talent who was once hailed as the heir to Tiger Woods after two victories and a meteoric rise in the world rankings, completely disappeared from the public scene. Nothing was known about him, only a few leaked photos appeared and he gave no explanations about the reasons why he had decided to park his professional career.
Apparently, a succession of serious injuries affected him. But earlier this year, surprisingly, he decided to return to competition by playing an event at LIV Golf, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Now, for the first time in all this time, he opens up in an interview with David Feherty, the usual commentator on the Saudi tour, revealing that some of the people he surrounded himself with at the time took their toll on him.
“I’m not going to lie, I was surrounded by bad people,” he says. “People who took advantage of me. Scammers. And when you’re 24 or 25, or even 30, you don’t realise the snakes that live under your roof,” he added. And Kim, without a doubt, knew what it was like to live with animals, because for a long time he had six dogs and two monkeys in his house, at a time when he hardly went out and spent his time watching reality TV.
Kim disconnected from most of the people around him, underwent several operations on his Achilles tendon and a shoulder, as well as surgeries on a hand and a spinal fusion. Physical problems that weighed him down. “Golf is important to me and at the same time it is not. I’ve had very dark, very low moments. I’ve felt very lonely, even having a million people around. I needed to clear my mind and figure out what my purpose in this world was,” he confesses.
Kim says he had offers to return to the PGA Tour before deciding to join LIV Golf. And on his return, at the age of 38, he had to settle for a score of 16 over par, finishing last in the standings. Even so, he was “encouraged” by his return and hopes to gradually return to normal, after becoming a father and regaining interest in the sport.
“I have an interesting relationship with golf. I think I’ve never liked it. What’s very strange to me right now is that I’m falling in love with this sport,” he says. “It’s a very strange time for me because golf was full of pressure, golf was full of many different emotions for me, because my family had to go through a lot to give me this opportunity to play golf. So with that added pressure, I was willing to risk a lot more. That was my nature. I was aggressive on the golf course, I was aggressive off the golf course. And that led me to ruin,” he concluded.
