Greetings!
I don’t know if we count as mainstream media, but we are absolutely going to cover Anthony Kim winning (!) Adelaide early on Sunday morning.
But first!
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1. I didn’t really plan on it, but I ended up staying up until 1 a.m. on Saturday night/Sunday morning watching AK ward off some of the biggest stars in golf.
At one point on the broadcast — and there are many things about the broadcast I like and that CBS and/or NBC should steal! — they posted a tweet that said something along the lines of … uh, guys, is AK about to light up Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau.
If guffawing is a thing, I guffawed. As a staunch defender of the “Rahm is a generational player” take as well as the “Bryson is maybe the best closer in the game” stance, I thought, Surely this moron has never been on Data Golf Dot Com.
And then AK absolutely lit up Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau.
2. The entire thing was objectively awesome. All of it.
The win from nearly out of nowhere (look at his last 25 starts!).
The way it went down. With AK making so many birdies and throwing so many right hooks he said he was concerned for his 40-year-old hips afterward.
And the way it ended. With seemingly everyone on property closing in around him.
As well as a Stanley Cup-esque line of golfers congratulating him on the 72nd green, which culminated in Bryson DeChambeau asking for an autograph him to sign his scorecard.
Put the whole thing in my veins. The best LIV Golf experience, surely, by standard deviations since this entire thing started.
3. AK’s arc, which culminated at that event, reminded me of this recent great post on the eight shapes of stories, which was a Kurt Vonnegut special.
Here’s the one AK embodies. As you can see, I made it unique to his story.
And here’s the description of it.
A character’s doing fine, gets herself into a huge problem, and must overcome it. They end up better than they started. “You see this story again and again,” [Kurt] Vonnegut says. “People love it, and it is not copyrighted.”
Nathan Baugh
This is compelling. Among the most compelling story shapes in the world. Easy to root for and even easier to appreciate. If you weren’t rooting for Anthony Kim in the wee hours of Sunday morning then your hate for him or LIV runs deeper than your hardwired love of this story shape. That, I think, would be fairly unusual.
4. I found AK’s message to be encouraging, if a bit profane. Here’s the clip (which I would not listen to around your kids).
TL;DR —> Don’t fu***** give up.
I am glad for the humanity of this particular story. I think it’s awesome. AK has clearly seen some stuff, obviously has some demons. Life is difficult for everyone and seems to have been tremendously difficult for him.
No matter what you believe about his insurance policy or what LIV paid him or whether he was a sideshow or any of that — all valid questions by the way! — the truth here is that he chose a difficult thing. He chose the work. He chose sobriety. He picked the narrower way. That is worthy of 10x the celebration DJ threw him with the fizzy water on 18 at Adelaide, and it is the part I have been reflecting on.
I don’t think AK the person is really for me. I think the idea of AK over the last 10 years has been tantalizing, but his worldview, some of his remarks since he returned and just the general disposition? Probably not my thing.
However!
I both enjoy the emotional golfer that he is (and always has been), and I deeply respect the way he has clawed out of the darkness that clearly enveloped him. I’m glad this win shined a light on all of that, and I liked this quote from him in the aftermath.
I told my wife this: The only way I get to reach the amount of people I want to reach is by winning. I can talk about my struggles all I want, but if I don't have the platform, then I won't reach as many people.
When I was in rehab, that was my goal. I said, if I got out of here, I'd like to help people, and golf wasn't in the picture. So to be able to have this platform, to have HE and LIV welcome me with open arms has been tremendous in my growth and my self-belief that other people believe in me. So absolutely.
My goal is to inspire the people that are struggling because I feel like the world needs more of that today.
Anthony Kim
5. All of that being said! The aftermath of this win has been representative of everything I have always disliked about LIV.
They breathless hyperbole. The arrogant chest-thumping. The amusing gatekeeping.
All of it has been insane.
It started as AK walked up the last few holes with David Feherty (of all people!) unironically explaining why this was a capper to a comeback story even greater than Ben Hogan’s car crash in 1949.
The one Hogan recovered from and went on to win six more majors, including the sort-of-slam in 1953 when he won all three that he played in but couldn’t make it back from Carnoustie for the PGA because his boat wasn’t fast enough.
It was compared to Tiger’s 2019 Masters win, declared bigger than Rory’s slam and a hundred other wins over the last few decades.
One way to frame this is that it was a really nice win by a really great character after a very long time. The other way to frame it is that Bjorn Hellgren and Luis Masaveu were in this tiny field and LIV Adelaide is tantamount to a solid Euro Tour event.
I say this not to disparage what AK accomplished (which I think I’ve been pretty vocal about!) but rather to turn down the temperature on the takes, which don’t need to be at 15 on a scale of 1-10 for us to care about them.
Also! I feel like AK is being discussed as if something was done to him when the reality is kinda the other way around.
That doesn’t make the comeback less remarkable (or inspirational!), but let’s not talk about him as if he’s some victim in the proceedings here. To frame it in such a way is an oversimplification of an incredibly messy story and disingenuous to reality.
It is, honestly, probably how the PGA Tour — with all of its perfect gentlemen — would want it framed.
6. I would say it is the strangest thing in the world to root for a … league (!), but I do understand that people who do this are rooting for a political and cultural ideal. They identify as contrarians and rally around anything that represents even a sniff of a rebellion in golf (and probably elsewhere in life).
Fine.
I get it. I sympathize with it.
But you can’t spend three years demanding the attention of the world, suddenly getting it and then deciding who does and does not get to celebrate an objectively celebratory thing. That’s crazy! This is the best thing that has ever happened within your $5 billion world, and you’re trying to sift through who gets to talk about it.
Deeply unserious stuff! And wasn’t gatekeeping the activity and celebration of pro golf the very thing the rest of us were criticized for to begin with?!
7. One thing that annoyed me in the presser was this from AK.
Q. Do you have a sense of just how inspirational your story has become?
ANTHONY KIM: Well, I know the mainstream media is not going to pick it up, but for the people that do hear about it, I want to be a good example. I would say that I wasn't the best person, the best partner, the best whatever you want to call it, the best son I could be when I was younger. But who I am today is a completely different person.
Anthony Kim
The insecure, aggrieved nature of so many folks involved with LIV is wild to me.
The treasury of one of the more questionable governments in the world is subsidizing your golf league for $1B a year, and you’re mad that people are mad about that?!
Like, you have to know that jumping into this league means you’re going to get a lot of questions and a lot of takes.
To expect anything less than that over the last four years is delusional!
No, it was you! You did this!
Also, this is extremely true.
8. Joel and Paolo made the same point here, which is that you can’t engineer caring about something. Again, this gets at one of my fundamental problems with LIV, which is that they thought if they threw enough money at a thing it would force everyone to care about it. Money solves a lot of problems. That’s not one of them.
And any iota of recognition of that truth over the last four years — one ounce of humility — would have gone a long way in getting folks more on board with all of this.
9. We always struggle with the idea that two (or more) things can be true. I think in my time covering sports (both CFB and golf), it is the thing I have noticed most often about myself and in fans.
The AK story can be great and LIV can still be very stupid.
AK can be both a bit annoying and also very inspirational.
This story can be tremendous and also not the greatest golf story of all time.
There has always been an air of desperation from the space LIV has inhabited. It has always felt like they are desperate to matter, desperate to belong and will attempt to do both at literally any cost.
There is a great irony in the fact that so many people involved with the moment that has brought the greatest amount of credibility and prestige to LIV are trying to make it even bigger than it actually is, thus immediately making it unpalatable and difficult to savor.
The AK story is one of the best golf moments of the last few years.
I wish we could just enjoy it as exactly that.
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Also, I thought this was a great take.
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