Anthony Kim Is Reportedly Planning A Comeback To Golf Despite 12-Year Absence, $10 Million Insurance Headache
LIV Golf is in the headlines business. When you're a new league taking on an established entity like the PGA Tour, splashy moves are what you're after. Which is why this Anthony Kim news makes so much sense.
According to Dylan Dethier of Golf Magazine, Kim is plotting a return to golf after a 13-year absence. The three-time PGA Tour winner is reportedly in discussions with both LIV Golf and the PGA Tour about a comeback. The main obstacle here is a $10 million insurance policy that Kim collected after retiring from golf at the age of 29. Should he return, he would likely owe that money back to the insurance company.
Which is why, for me, this has LIV Golf written all over it. They'd likely pay the money back—cash is not their issue—to land Kim, who has not played a professional golf event since 2012. He played 10 events that year and made just two cuts. Which brings us to our next point: for Kim, LIV wakes way more sense than playing on the PGA Tour. At LIV, Kim wouldn't have to worry about getting into tournaments or making cuts. He'd get a runway to play some events and guaranteed money for his efforts. Granted, Kim likely wouldn't struggle to get sponsor invites into PGA Tour events, at least initially, and he would get into some events with his past champion status. But the PGA Tour is highly unlikely to make a $10 million payment to get him back on their tour, and the PGA Tour remains a meritocracy. Should he come back and continue to struggle, he'll eventually have trouble getting into events. And then there's the issue of making the cut. There's really no "negotiating" a return with the PGA Tour. You get whatever status the rulebook tells you that you get.
For LIV, adding Kim would inject some intrigue into the league, which has yet to announce a big-name signing after securing Jon Rahm for somewhere around $500 million in December. LIV's league season begins next week at Mayakoba in Mexico, then will play the following week in Las Vegas the same week that Vegas hosts the Super Bowl. There've been multiple reports that world No. 38 Adrian Meronk, from Poland, will join LIV Golf after he withdrew abruptly from the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines this week. Another name that's popped up in rumors recently is Ryder Cupper Tyrrell Hatton, though Hatton himself said last week that he plans to stay on the PGA/DP World Tour for this season and recently committed to playing in the Waste Management Phoenix Open, which is the same week as LIV Las Vegas.
All this, of course, is happening as the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund continue to try to hammer out a concrete deal after the two sides agreed to a Framework Agreement last June. The PGA Tour has also been in talks with Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of American sport franchise owners that would inject capital into a new for-profit entity that will operate under the umbrella of, but separate from, the PGA Tour.
Kim made over $12 million in his PGA Tour career but competed before the massive influx of cash that golf has seen in recent years. He played before the FedEx Cup and its lucrative bonuses began. He played before social media allowed players to monetize their celebrity far more efficiently than they could before. And he played before LIV Golf came onto the scene, boosting purses across the professional golf landscape. It's only logical that Kim might be seeing some of the numbers golfers are making today and thinking, I gotta get a piece of that.
Kim's brash, anti-country club style captivated younger audiences during his peak from 2007-10. He wore a white belt with a massive AK buckle. He routed Sergio Garcia in the 2008 Ryder Cup and didn't even realize he'd won the match. He made 11 birdies in a round at the Masters, still the all-time tournament record. He told an audience at a clinic with Tiger Woods that he has no warm-up routine and simply shows up to the golf course curious how far his wedges go every day.
There will be a great deal of curiosity whenever Kim tees it up next, no matter where it is. The question is: What happens next? If he returns to elite-level competition, it's an incredible comeback story and he's a star. If he doesn't, the aura fades and LIV wasted a spot on a 38-year-old who hasn't won a tournament since 2012. That's the tricky thing with comebacks we like to dream about—when they actually happen, it's often more anticlimactic than anything.
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