The First Look: Sanderson Farms Championship

HOUSTON – Later this month, Peter Malnati will become a father. His wife Alicia is due on Oct. 26, and whether their first child is a boy or a girl remains a surprise until the delivery. For the last couple of months, they’ve been making preparations to turn their new house into, as Peter says, a home. So it’s understandable that he’s been a little distracted lately inside the ropes. His results reflect it. He ended last season with a pair of missed cuts, then started the 2019-20 season with a Saturday WD due to a bad back, a T45 finish at the Sanderson Farms Championship, and consecutive missed cuts in his last two starts. Entering this week, he hadn’t broken 70 in his last eight rounds. Already planning to take the next five weeks off, Malnati wondered if he should even be playing the Houston Open. “The last couple weeks I’ve let it be a distraction in that I haven’t really prepared the way I normally would because my head’s back home. I want to be home,â€� Malnati said. “This week I was like, ‘dude, this is your last tournament before you become a dad, like do something with it.’ “The best thing you can do for your wife and your kid is to go out and play good.â€� So he did. Related: Leaderboard | Hammer roots on Astros after 67 | Beem’s ‘simply incredible’ first round Malnati shot a 3-under 69 on Thursday, followed by a bogey-free 7-under 65 on Friday morning at the Golf Club of Houston. That leaves him at 10 under. When he walked off the course, he was the clubhouse leader, with first-round co-leaders Austin Cook and Talor Gooch just starting their day. Given the windy conditions that kicked in in mid-morning after a 2-hour rain delay, the field average soared to nearly 73 for those with an early tee time. That means Malnati’s 65 was nearly 8 strokes better than the field. His caddie Chad Antus, who has been on the bag for about 2-1/2 seasons, called it the best round he had seen Malnati play. The only other round worthy of a comparison was the 10-under 62 that Malnati shot at the 2018 Korn Ferry Tour Championship, a round that included an eagle and 10 birdies. “Given the conditions of the course and everything else going on,â€� Antus said, “this round today was No. 1.“ While the next few weeks certainly will be exciting, Malnati is now in position to make the next two days exciting, too, as he chases his second career PGA TOUR win. He won the Sanderson Farms four years ago. “I practiced with a lot more focus this week and it’s nice to see that that does result in some better golf for me,â€� he said. “Yes, my head is definitely a little bit elsewhere, but again, the best thing even after the kid comes, when I do decide me and my wife decide it’s time for me to go play again — the best thing I can do when I’m at a tournament is focus on the tournament. “That’s what they need me to do, so that’s what I’m trying to do this week. It’s beyond words to say I’m 98% excited, 2% terrified, all of that is definitely at play right now. My wife’s the best and she’s going to be the best mother, so we’re going to handle things all right back home.â€� Perhaps Friday is an indication that he’s handling things inside the ropes too. Last season, Malnati’s only top-10 finish in 26 starts last season was in a team event, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, when he and Billy Hurley III were T9. But he was steady enough to make the FedExCup Playoffs and keep his TOUR card, actually improving his status from the previous year when he missed the Playoffs. In some ways, though, it was a breakthrough season for Malnati. He cites two areas of improvement – improved iron play and increased distance off the tee. On Friday, he said he “drove the ball beautifullyâ€� and was excited to see where he ranked in the field in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, a statistic in which he’s never ranked better than 150th in the previous four seasons and generally gives up strokes to the field. “I’m not a huge guy into stats,â€� he said. “At the end of the day, there’s only one that matters and that’s score and I had a good one of those today, but I do like to look at my driving stats and they’ve been really, really a weakness for me for a year.â€� What a story it would be if Malnati could pull off a win in Houston this weekend. What better way to enter fatherhood than with a shiny new trophy to show his child. “Most kids, when they kick it around at their home course growing up, they’re dreaming about that putt to win the Masters or that putt to win the U.S. Open or that putt to win THE PLAYERS Championship or something like that,â€� Malnati said. “I always took that dream one step farther. My dream, I used to as a little kid, I would watch and you would see these guys hole out to win the big tournaments and their wife and their little kids would just come running out on the green. That to me, that’s where the dream really is. That was the dream stuff. “I already won a Korn Ferry Tour event with my wife caddying for me, I won a big amateur event with my mom caddying for me, so I’ve gotten to have some of those kind of family moments at the end of a tournament. But the idea of actually being a father and then one day hopefully having my kids get to see me do what I love to do, which is this, and hopefully do it well is something that I kind of get emotional even just thinking about that. “That’s going to be so awesome for me.â€�

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It was pro-am day at the Hero World Challenge at Albany Golf Course, everyone in that liminal state somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the horn blew. With play done for the day, the soaked players scrambled for shelter in the clubhouse. Tom Kim, another force of nature and the first player since Tiger Woods to win twice on the PGA TOUR before turning 21, sat in the middle of it all on a plush couch in front of a World Cup game he wasn’t really watching. (His beloved South Korea would play later.) He’d been asked what it’s like to be a super-rookie –Trevor Immelman, the International Team’s captain at the recent Presidents Cup, has called him the next global superstar – and whether he gets teased. “Those guys give me such a hard time,” Kim said, smiling and shaking his head at the players 10, 20 and even 30 years his senior, many of whom he grew up watching on TV. “It’s hard to say what they do specifically, because they change it up a lot.” A wet towel came flying in, chucked by Shane Lowry, and landed in Kim’s lap. “Just like that!” Kim said. “That’s a perfect example!” All of which is to say that everybody loves Joohyung “Tom” Kim, named for his childhood fascination with Thomas the Tank Engine, and one of the most exciting young players to rumble up the tracks in years. Converts include even Rory McIlroy, who played a nine-hole practice round with Kim at the BMW Championship, watched the Presidents Cup on TV and relished being paired with him at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina in October. McIlroy won to return to world No. 1, Kim tied for 11th, and they shared a hug afterward. Game recognize game. Converts also include Immelman, who understandably loves the player who was the heartbeat of his team, and Lowry, who showed his affection with locker room hijinks at the Hero. “I played with Tom in Hong Kong in January 2020, an Asian Tour event, I was 32 or 33 at the time,” Lowry said. “I remember walking down one hole and I said to him, ‘How old are you?’ And he was like, ‘Seventeen.’ I was like, ‘Oh, for f— sake.’ (Laughs) I thought he was good then and obviously he’s kicked this year and he’s done some great things.” Kim was impressive at the Wyndham Championship in August. He made a quadruple-bogey on his first hole of the tournament but still won by five thanks to a final-round 61 (including an incredible 27 on Sunday’s opening nine that was one off the TOUR’s nine-hole scoring record). He was mesmerizing as he blistered a 240-yard 2-iron and rolled in the earth-shaking birdie putt to keep hope alive for the International Team at the Presidents Cup in September. And he was humble after making not a bogey for the week and outlasting Patrick Cantlay at the Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas in October. The youth, the talent, the googly Presidents Cup glasses – Kim has it all, a gift from the Golf Gods that seems to have fallen out of the sky fully formed. He will be among the headliners at this week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions. A product of the world Born in Korea to father Changik Lee and mother Kwanjoo Kim, Kim and his older brother, Jaewook Kim, were moved to China for a few years before the family picked up again and alighted for Australia so the brothers could learn English. After living Down Under for seven years the family picked up and moved yet again. “Once we learned English we moved to the Philippines because Australia was getting a little expensive,” Kim said, “and we knew people in the Philippines.” It was in the Philippines that Kim really took to golf, initially under the tutelage of his father, a teaching professional. (Somewhat surprisingly, Kim says their swings are not similar.) The game was accessible there, and Kim went all in, getting homeschooled. With designs on playing the Asian Tour, he and the family moved again, this time to Thailand, which was more conveniently located for travel purposes. He turned pro at 15. Too young for the Asian Tour, Kim played professionally in Thailand until he was 16, when he failed to get through the Asian Tour’s qualifying school. Three quick wins on the Asian Development Tour followed, earning him special temporary membership on the Asian Tour, where he won in his second start. He was just 17. Just as impressive, he was fluent in Tagalog, English and Korean. Kim speaks Korean to his parents, English to his brother. He says he dreams in both languages. Those dreams still hadn’t become a reality as he missed by a shot at the second stage of the Korn Ferry Tour Q-School in 2021, but again, he didn’t stay down for long. He won the Korean Tour Order of Merit, and when the Asian Tour resumed after the COVID hiatus, he won its Order of Merit for the 2020-21 season, too, to get into the 2022 U.S. Open and Open Championship. His goal was to play the Asian Tour and head back to Korn Ferry Tour Q-School last fall. As it turned out, he bypassed that circuit entirely. The quantum leap came not when he finished 23rd at the U.S. Open but when he finished solo third at the Genesis Scottish Open in July. After finishing T47 at The Open he joined the PGA TOUR as a Special Temporary Member. A T26 at the 3M Open and solo seventh at the Rocket Mortgage Classic preceded his life-changing victory at the Wyndham. Kim, the first TOUR winner to be born after the year 2000, was suddenly a card-carrying TOUR pro. “My childhood was always about golf,” he said at the Hero. “I didn’t really have a life outside of that. There were a lot of sacrifices made to do what I’m doing right now.” Making a splash Don’t expect a booze-soaked celebration when Kim turns 21. “I’m not a big drinker,” he said. “I’ve never even tried alcohol.” When the Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis interviewed Kim and McIlroy at THE CJ CUP, Kim said he hadn’t so much as sipped a beer after either of his wins. “All right,” McIlroy said, “when you turn 21 and you win your next PGA TOUR event, I’m going to bring you out for a few drinks.” “Oh, that’s awesome,” Kim said. At the Hero in the Bahamas, Kim was pretty sure he wasn’t even old enough to be in the casino. That said, he was still the life of the party. He relished getting a chance to talk to his golf idol, tournament host Woods, for the first time, even if he was slightly nervous. “I didn’t really know what to say to Tiger,” he said. “I told him, ‘We really miss you. We really wish you were playing this week.’ He’s like, ‘Good playing this year, and congratulations.’” The next day, Kim, Woods, Justin Thomas, Max Homa, Matt Fitzpatrick, Billy Horschel, and Tommy Fleetwood were mic’d up for the so-called Hero Shot, a pitch of around 85 yards to a floating bullseye. Kim was so intent on winning that at one point he called for a video replay, and when he finished second to Fitzpatrick, he had his head in his hands as if crushed. You got the feeling he was only half-joking. “I mean, how can you not like Tom Kim?” said Spieth, who at the Hero was sharing a house with his wife, Annie, and their son, Sammy, plus Justin Thomas and his wife, Jill. “We use the same physio, and he got worked on at the house we’re staying at, and when he left, Annie and Jill are like, ‘Is he not the nicest human being?’ That’s what everyone says about him. “He’s so happy to be out here, loves the game,” continued Spieth, the only player since World War II to win on TOUR at a younger age than Kim. “It’s cool. It reminds me of the way I thought about it when I was his age and makes me want to get back to thinking that way.” It’s partly his enthusiasm that makes Kim so magnetic. In the Hero locker room, Spieth asked him about the food in Japan, where Kim tied for fourth at the Dunlop Phoenix in late November. Lowry threw the towel. Others no doubt observed him and thought some version of, Oh, to have his future. “Tom Kim is absolutely poised as the next global superstar,” Immelman said. “He has an uncanny ability to have amazing self-confidence but still be humble. He’s like a shining light. He makes you want to root for him. He makes you want to be around him.” His precocity accounts for a lot of that, but don’t shortchange his sense of humor. When he wasn’t wowing with his shot-making at the Presidents Cup, Kim was cutting up and lightening the mood. First, he kept busting out of his team-issued trousers and laughing along as his teammates poked fun. Then he said he didn’t want to play in black golf shoes because they would make his feet too hot. And then there were Kim’s goofy, bug-eyed glasses. “Oh, yeah, I kept those glasses,” he said. Ask him to pinpoint his most indelible moment and he points to the 240-yard 2-iron approach and 10-foot birdie putt to give him and Si Woo Kim a 1-up victory over Cantlay and Xander Schauffele in a Four-ball match late Saturday afternoon. The other matches were complete, so Kim delivered this thunderbolt in front of not only his teammates but also a who’s who of American golf. The Internationals, who had trailed 10-4 that morning, had now cut the margin to 11-7 going into the Singles, still behind but now energized beyond measure thanks to Kim. “It felt like such a big time for our team to have that,” he said. “We did lose (the next day), but whoever gets on that team going to Montreal, playing on home soil, I feel like it’s going to give us some momentum. Beating that elite team in the way we did, being 1 down with three to go and winning 1 up, that’s a memory that’s going to last who knows how long.” Settling in for the long haul At the Wyndham, Kim said, everything happened so fast he didn’t have time to think. He wanted to show it wasn’t a fluke at the Shriners, where Cantlay, the 2021 FedExCup champion, came unglued on the 72nd hole. Kim became just the second player since Lee Trevino in 1974 to win on TOUR without making a bogey or worse (J.T. Poston also did it at the 2019 Wyndham). These days, Kim has begun renting a house in Dallas, which will be his U.S. base. He can fly non-stop back to Korea, and he’s centrally located to play the TOUR. He’ll practice out of Dallas National and Trinity Forest, giving him plenty of time to rub elbows with luminaries like Spieth, Will Zalatoris and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. And Kim has begun working with Cameron McCormick, who’s best known as Spieth’s coach since childhood. What exactly Kim might do for an encore in ’23 is a tantalizing prospect. “He is just damn good,” Immelman said. “He has a crazy amount of talent.” And like his countrymen – Kim, Si Woo Kim, Sungjae Im, and K.H. Lee made up a third of the International Presidents Cup Team – he has the work ethic to match. He’s also cleaned up his diet, severely curtailing if not eliminating the Del Taco, Taco Bell, and Chick-fil-A. Granted, Kim has some courses to study up on, as he has never played TPC Sawgrass, Augusta National or this year’s other major venues: Oak Hill (PGA Championship), L.A. Country Club (U.S. Open) or Royal Liverpool (Open Championship). “I think I know every hole at Augusta from TV,” he said. “I think Jason Dufner was the last winner at Oak Hill?” (He was. Kim was 11.) As for the other courses, Kim’s veteran caddie, Joe Skovron, formerly the bag man for Rickie Fowler, should help him fill in the gaps. Kim already works out, but said he’ll be “more specific” in the gym. Courses in Asia have much narrower fairways, and he wants to get more comfortable hitting the ball hard. His 240-yard approach shot at Quail Hollow – he admittedly heeled his drive into the wind, leaving him way behind Si Woo, Cantlay and Schauffele – was insanely great, but perhaps not repeatable. His brother, five years his senior, just graduated from the military and is getting ready to go for his master’s degree. His other older brother, of sorts, is Im, who is 24 and just got married in Seoul. Then again, the way everyone has taken to Kim, he’s got big brothers in Lowry, McIlroy and up and down the TOUR. He’s got a home. All there is to do now is let the Tank Engine run. “It’s up to me to play well now,” Kim said. “I know my schedule, I’m more comfortable. It’s up to me to put in the work. There are so many ways I can get better. “I’m still a kid around these guys,” he continued. “I’m curious to find out what they do, how they think. I am very aware of how lucky I am to play the PGA TOUR at 20 years old. It’s easy for people to take things for granted; I want to make sure I don’t lose that feeling.”

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