Called the ‘Next Tiger Woods,’ He Walked Away
A young man is walking briskly across the grass, on his way to someplace entirely new. Hundreds of people are clapping as he passes. The man lowers his head, tugs off his cap and holds it in the air. A smile flickers across his face, then disappears.
This is Anthony Kim. It is 2008, and he is 22, one shot away from earning his first win in a professional golf tournament. When he reaches the 18th green, he pauses, not only to line up his final putt but also, he later reveals, to let a simple fact swirl into his consciousness: My life is about to change. Mr. Kim taps the ball, and it clunks into the cup. He punches the air twice, screams, “Yes!” twice.
He is $1.2 million richer. “That walk up 18 was the best feeling in my entire life,” he says later that day. “I want to re-create that as many times as possible now.”
The feeling would prove fleeting. Four years after that first win, after more rousing victories that established him as one of golf’s biggest stars, Mr. Kim took a sudden leave from the game. Injuries were hampering his play, and he needed time to heal.
He never came back.
A full decade after Mr. Kim stopped playing professional golf, people still wonder if he might ever return. They wonder, in part, because of his talent. More than that, though, they wonder because he never bothered to explain himself. Mr. Kim walked away in 2012 without saying goodbye.
Mr. Kim was supposed to be the next Tiger Woods. Instead, he became the sports world’s J.D. Salinger. Sports Illustrated
The golf world still wonders if Anthony Kim will return.
called him “golf’s yeti.” Pictures and stories hinting at his whereabouts regularly go viral on social media. Last summer, when the new LIV Golf circuit began recruiting players with huge, guaranteed sums of money, many people wondered: Could Mr. Kim, still just 37, be coaxed back?
Mr. Kim’s total retreat stirs all kinds of questions about sports and celebrity: What duty does a person have to his God-given talent? What does that person owe to his fans? And what does it mean, really, to disappear?
Mr. Kim was born and raised in Los Angeles, the only son of South Korean immigrants. Although his golf swing would come to appear effortless, his skills were intensely honed during his childhood years by his father, Paul, and a string of coaches.
Two months after that first PGA Tour win came a second. It was only his second year on the tour, but he was operating with the prowess of a veteran. He finished the 2008 season with eight top-10 finishes, $4.7 million in winnings and a tornado of hype.
At some point during this ascent, Mr. Kim took out an insurance policy on his body. When injuries forced him to step away from the game, he began receiving monthly checks that reportedly would cease if he returned to competition. The payout, according to a Sports Illustrated article from 2014 that cited anonymous sources close to Mr. Kim, landed somewhere between $10 million and $20 million and was the primary reason, they said, for his prolonged absence.
Yet there has remained something unsatisfying about that line of reasoning. Few other golfers relished the simple act of competing as much as he so plainly did.
Mr. Kim last spoke about his golf career in 2015, three years after he left the game. In an interview with Associated Press, he confirmed that he was receiving insurance payments, but he denied that the money was the reason he was not returning to competition.
He said he needed time to rehabilitate an assortment of injuries. He was hiring a new trainer. In all, he sounded optimistic, saying he was happy with his progress.
Communicating through friends, Mr. Kim declined to be interviewed for this article.
Those who know him say he splits time between Texas, California and Oklahoma. He became a father in 2021 and got married last summer. He has broad investments. He and his wife own The Collective, a popular food hall in Oklahoma City.
To answer a question on everyone’s mind: Mr. Kim plays golf, but only sporadically. Adam Schriber, who has been Mr. Kim’s swing coach since he was a teenager, said in an interview that he played twice with Mr. Kim in the past two years.
“It’s the same swing you remember,” Mr. Schriber said.
The sports world craves neatly legible narratives. But Mr. Kim’s path offers a reminder of how frequently the most common tropes — the underdog stories and redemption arcs, the last shots and legacies and love of the game — fall short of capturing the complexities of the people who play.
Mr. Kim hinted at a possible worldview in a 2009 interview with Golf Digest, when he responded to a question about his apparent fearlessness on the course by deflating its very premise.
“It’s just golf,” he said.