Kim joins elite group with win at the Players

Si Woo Kim joined the list of golfers to win the Players Championship on Sunday. All but 12 winners in the 44-year history also are major champions. By all accounts, the South Korean is just getting started.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLA. >> Si Woo Kim earned access to a room reserved for winners of The Players Championship. He now shares locker No. 4 with Lanny Wadkins, the former PGA champion and Ryder Cup stalwart. Locker No. 5 belongs to Lee Trevino, the six-time major champion.

Both are in a far more exclusive club located about 30 minutes away at the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Kim is still 21.

The strength of The Players Championship is the depth of its field, the size of its purse and the pedigree of so many winners. Now that Kim has joined the list, all but 12 winners in the 44year history also are major champions.

By all accounts, South Korean is just started.

Kim showed remarkable calm amid inevitable chaos at the TPC Sawgrass to become the youngest winner of The Players Championship. He took the lead with a 25-foot birdie putt on the seventh hole and never gave the getting it back.

He missed the green 10 times and saved par each time. Playing in the penultimate group, he had the second-best score in the final round (69), and he was the only player in the field to not make bogey.

It will rank as one of the best Sunday performances on the scary Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass.

And maybe the most surprising.

Statistics and scores going into The Players Championship would not have led anyone to pay attention to Kim.

The tour’s “strokes gained” statistic measures how a player performs against the field and has become the most reliable standard. Going into last week, Kim was ranked outside the top 200 in three categories related to the long game (driving, approach shots and tee-to-green).

He was better in putting, the most important category in golf. Kim was at No. 183. This was the second PGA Tour title for Kim. He shot 60 in the second round of the Wyndham Championship last August and won by five.