Anthony Kim’s comeback victory at LIV Golf Adelaide on Sunday reverberated around the sporting world.
Kim, now 40, stunned golf fans when he overcame a five-shot final-round deficit to major champions and final group playing partners Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm to win the league’s flagship event in Australia by three shots.
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The popular, outspoken three-time PGA Tour winner then delivered a must-watch news conference following his first worldwide win in 5,795 days. Kim’s vulnerability and honesty about his comeback from drug, alcohol and mental health struggles, as well as 12 years away from golf, only bolstered what is the golf story of the year so far.
The former Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup star walked away from pro golf in 2012 due to injuries. In that time, he almost totally disappeared from public life. But by 2021, he had turned his life around, became a husband and father, and began practicing his golf game in private. In 2024, he was invited to play LIV Golf as a wildcard player. The Los Angeles native was relegated from LIV last year only to earn one of three cards through its qualifying school last month.
Kim was asked in Adelaide on Sunday what he would eventually tell his daughter, Bella, about the tumultuous period of his life and career between 2012 and 2024.
“I’m going to try to leave a lot of details out,” Kim said. “But I will tell her that before she came into this world that I didn’t feel any purpose in my life. Whether you have a lot of money, whether you have a lot of success in your life, you still can feel lonely and feel like the world is against you, and that’s in your own mind because I had a lot of people rooting for me. Obviously, you saw out there how many people were rooting for me.
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“But I just want her to know that no matter how bad your day is, if you keep fighting, you never lose. Hopefully she takes that with her for the rest of her life.
“When Bella was born, [wife] Emily and my life changed. But to be able to share this moment, even though Bella won’t understand it, one day she will, and for her to be able to run on the green and see her dad isn’t a loser was one of the most special moments of my life.”
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Marc Leishman, a member of Cam Smith’s Ripper GC side who won the team component at LIV Adelaide, came onto the PGA Tour in 2009 at the peak of Kim’s powers. Now both playing on LIV, Leishman described Kim’s comeback as “a fairytale.”
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“I’ve actually spoken to him a fair bit over the last couple of years about a few of his experiences, and I mean, it’s an unbelievable story, the place he got to and how close he was to not being here,” Leishman said. “I’m not talking about in Adelaide, I’m talking about not being on this planet.
“He had some times where just after his daughter was born, he got to some low places. I won’t elaborate more than that … I hope that people realize how it’s a fairytale, it really is. Not just golf but life. You see his wife and his daughter run out on the green, and that’s as good as it gets. I couldn’t be happier for AK.”
Kim ignited the Australian crowds when, after four front-nine birdies at The Grange, he went on a tear of four consecutive from the 12th hole, draining crucial putt after putt to steal the lead from Rahm. Another birdie at 17 allowed him to shoot a bogey-free 63 to win his first tournament since the 2010 Shell Houston Open on the PGA Tour. Kim said he could feel himself vanquishing his struggles with each of his fist-pumping nine birdies.
“Yeah. I’m too old to be reacting like that because I think I pulled something in my hip,” Kim joked. “But I will say that that was all the lows that I went through in my life that I got to dig out of. Every putt that went in, I felt the struggle, and I was overcoming it. It was therapeutic out there to fight through it and come out on top.”
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Kim hoped his climb back to the winner’s circle resonated with those inside and outside of sport.
“One thousand percent—I want to inspire people,” he said.
“I told my wife this: The only way I get to reach the amount of people I want to reach is by winning. I can talk about my struggles all I want, but if I don’t have the platform, then I won’t reach as many people.”
Kim certainly reached them on Sunday. And his lesson was simple.
“Don’t f—ing quit. That’s it. Don’t f—ing quit.”
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