Doug Ghim was lost. The former No. 1 amateur in the world had just missed the cut at the 2020 Sony Open in Hawaii, his fourth weekend off in his first five PGA TOUR starts. Swing changes suggested by an instructor he politely refuses to name hadn’t solidified, and he now wondered if they ever would. Fast forward to today and Ghim is one of the most improved players on TOUR. He contended at THE PLAYERS Championship before fading on the weekend to a T29; has made 13 of 17 cuts, including seven top-25s; and with partner Justin Suh just finished T11 at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Ghim is 70th in this season’s FedExCup, an improvement of more than 100 spots over last year. He finished 184th in 2020 and would have lost his TOUR card were it not for the pandemic, and the TOUR freezing everyone’s status for 2020-21. “I’ve always been a slow starter,” says Ghim. Not sure he belonged, he felt that way in junior golf, and college. “And then you turn pro,” he continues, “and it’s like, that’s Dustin Johnson, or Rory, or Tiger, or whoever. Honestly, when I get out here, sometimes I feel like I’m 5 years old.” Few good stories came out of 2020, but without that terrible year we wouldn’t have one of the best stories of 2021. Ghim’s fantasy camp perma-smile suggests even he can’t quite believe it. His parents immigrated from South Korea, and the family had modest means. His father Jeff, an architect who also taught golf, put up a net in their backyard in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a cube-like contraption with metal pipes. His mother Susan, a flight attendant, was gone a fair amount, but his older sister, Deborah, helped look after him. Doug graduated to a junior membership at The Arboretum Club, a nearby public course where father and son fished golf balls out of the ponds. They practiced constantly, and Ghim, no taller than a pull cart when he started, got better. He played local junior tournaments and then American Junior Golf Association events, making use of that organization’s ACE Grant in order to help defray the costs. (A cause for which Ghim remains a passionate advocate.) It was during Ghim’s sophomore year of high school, on a sunny day in September, when he came home from school to find a large box from Titleist had come in the mail. “I remember opening the box, and my dad watching me, and it was a pretty emotional moment,” Ghim says. “It was kind of one of those things like look how far we’ve come.” Having gone from regional events to the AJGA’s invitational tournaments, Ghim had climbed high enough in the rankings to qualify for free gloves and hats from Titleist. Also, golf balls. Lots of them. “These things are not cheap, and I’m getting 12 dozen at a time, for free,” he says, smiling at the memory. “They were brand new, and I could put my own markings on them instead of taking nail polish remover and removing the markings from other people’s golf balls. It was cool.” He decamped for the University of Texas, where he was an All-American and established himself as one of golf’s top amateurs. At the 2017 Palmer Cup and Walker Cup, he went a combined 3-0 with partner Maverick McNealy in the Foursomes sessions. “He was just always was in position and made my life really easy,” says McNealy, who briefly lived with Ghim in Las Vegas. “That’s a true testament to a great player, if he’s an easy person to play with in alternate shot. He made so many clutch putts He has a knack for that.” The ’17 Walker Cup team was loaded with enough stars – Collin Morikawa, Will Zalatoris, Cameron Champ, Scottie Scheffler, Doc Redman and McNealy – to give anyone an inferiority complex. Still, Ghim went 4-0-0 as the Americans cruised. He turned pro and played well enough on the Korn Ferry Tour to earn his TOUR card for 2019. Then he bonked. Thinking he had to be technically perfect, Ghim abandoned his natural, vertical swing for a more rounded, inside-out action. It didn’t work. After missing the cut at the Sony, he resolved to start over and began working with Drew Steckel at the Farmers Insurance Open. It was January 2020. Both teacher and student live in Las Vegas but have Midwestern roots, and Steckel looked at swing pictures and video of Ghim, before and after, and saw a player who had lost his way. “I said, ‘Obviously, you have something good in there as the former No. 1 amateur, so let’s not reinvent you as a golfer,’” says Steckel, who teaches out of Southern Highlands Golf Club. “He had a very upright vertical swing naturally, and he was trying to get it really in and behind him, and it was a very uncomfortable position for him to play from.” Progress was slow. One week, Ghim would miss the cut by three. The next, he would miss by one. Meanwhile, Steckel worked on his confidence, helping Ghim realize he belonged on TOUR. “I brought him around my other guys, who in some cases have been out here 20 years,” he says. Players like Pat Perez, Kevin Na, Chesson Hadley and Jason Kokrak. “It was about getting him exposed to that and comfortable with that,” Steckel says. Then came the pandemic, and everything paused, allowing Ghim to keep working outside the glare of competition – a blessing in disguise for his career. He started seeing mental coach Jared Tendler, who works mostly with poker players, and lost 10-15 pounds by continuing to work out while consulting with a nutritionist who emails him recipes on the road. The TOUR’s decision to carry over players’ status for 2020-21 was also big. Ghim could exhale, and he started with a T14 at the Fortinet (then Safeway) Championship last fall. That led to a series of made cuts highlighted by a T5 at The American Express early this year. He contended at THE PLAYERS Championship (T29), playing with winner Justin Thomas on Sunday. Ghim shot 78, but having always looked up to Thomas he was thrilled to sign the card of the winner. “First time for that as a pro,” he says. “I learned that winning is an active verb.” He smiles at this, but then Ghim smiles a lot these days. Life is good. “People forget that Doug was the No. 1 amateur in the world, low amateur at the (2018) Masters, first-team All-American in college,” says Brett Augenstein, Ghim’s agent. “He hopes to have the success that Collin and those guys have had; obviously he hasn’t had it as quickly, but I think he has the confidence, deep down, to know that he can be as good as those guys.” Adds Ghim, “It’s a second start. I’m not a rookie, but I feel like one because I didn’t get to see a lot of these courses last year. I was also trying to figure out my swing and getting used to being out here, so I didn’t really get to try to attack the courses that I did see.” With sparkly credentials, top-of-the-line equipment, and now a growing certainty that he’s good enough just as he is, there’s no question Ghim belongs. Seldom has anyone made better use of a mulligan.
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