On Anthony Kim’s Muted Return

Not to contribute to anyone’s case of the Mondays, but another week has passed and still almost nothing about being a pro golf fan yields any return on that investment. The PGA Tour misread the weather forecast, giving us another Monday finish, at a Bear Trap neutered by Tour overmanagement, no less. The leaderboard is fairly underwhelming — part and parcel with the season up to this point. Most people only seemed to care about the weather delays in relation to how they would impact the Seminole Pro-Member. Not, you know, the resolution of a PGA Tour event.

Then there’s LIV Golf, with some of its top talent truly seeming to be in elite form. Bryson DeChambeau and Joaquin Niemann are tracking for green jacket contention. That may also be the only stage we care to see them perform. LIV Jeddah felt as pointless as you’d think, with a bunch of money changing hands in the middle of a barren desert course populated by the players, a scattering of LIV employees, and seemingly no one else. The team aspect has often yielded only ancillary, drama-free side games. The Crushers crushed. And Niemann stayed hot, posting the kind of wildly low numbers rivaled only by the number of people watching in the middle of the night in the United States.

And then there’s Anthony Kim, more legend than tour pro at this point. Surely the mystery around where he’s been the last 12 years and the accompanying lust for his return would put some life into this drowsy year of pro golf. It was fascinating just to have him back on a public stage. Was it fascinating to watch him play golf?

Much of the myth built over the last decade was always going to vanish once that seal was broken. The long-awaited return occurred in the middle of the night in his home country, and eventually led to a last-place-by-11-shots result. There were a few clips on social media, sure, but aside from that we saw very little promotion or reaction to him actually getting back on the course again. It had me channeling David Duval on that transatlantic flight home after finally capturing his first major: “Is this it?” We got the AK return, sure, but how it played out felt anticlimactic at best. Maybe that’s precisely how AK wanted it, in an effort to remove some pressure, but after all the years of thirst the whole thing felt empty. This is in no way a critique of his play or a judgment on his scoring; he posted admirable enough numbers given the layoff. But middling rounds will quickly get boring, leaving us yearning more for the old idea of an AK comeback as opposed to watching the actual AK comeback.

Hopefully, soon, there will be a different comeback, in the form of any kind of ROI for fans of pro golf.

This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.