Kim's Ryder Cup, Kim's stage
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - This was Anthony Kim's stage. This was his Ryder Cup. He had help. He had 11 teammates and a captain, but this was his stage, his Ryder Cup.For this Ryder Cup victory, you had to salute Paul Azinger, the American captain. He engineered it, first and foremost by raising it from a spiritual experience to a game of golf.
“This is no love fest,” he had said, in gentle rejection of the approach of past captains, who stressed team spirit and bonding and such. “These are professionals,” he said. “I'll find out who wants to play with who and tell them to go play.” It also helped that he convinced the PGA of America to allow him four captain's picks instead of the usual two, to fill out his 12-man team.
Azinger's contribution, then, was to find the players he wanted, and then to let them play golf.
Take nothing away from Boo Weekley, either. He's a down-home, aw-shucks guy from the Florida Panhandle who comes to golf just short of having a chaw and a whittlin' stick, and with a sense of the game that the boys down at the gas station have for their Wednesday night league. But with a game they could never recognize.
Remember Boo hitting his first tee shot Sunday, then galloping down Valhalla's first fairway on his golf stick, like a kid on a hobby horse. Before an international TV audience of how many millions, from countries whose names would surprise him.
Poor Oliver Wilson -- a good player, not a winner, but making the European team with a solid season, and then having to watch helplessly while Boo rang up six birdies and an eagle, and what an eagle. It was at the par-5 No. 7, out of a bunker, with a splash that looked too low and much too hot, but that raced right to the stick and dived in. And there was Boo, raising his arms to send a hysterical crowd over the top.
The Ryder Cup was a love fest - Boo and golf and the crowd.
But it was Anthony Kim who started it all. Kim is 23, a Ryder Cup rookie, formerly a kind of rebel. He split with his dad, liked to party, left college early and joined the tour, and spent part of his first season - last year - playing through hangovers.
When the singles pairings came out, there was Kim, leading off for the Americans, the same as he did the first day with Phil Mickelson in alternate shot. It seemed a delicate time, a rookie leading off. But for all of Kim's youth and inexperience, Azinger did not consider him to be vulnerable. He figured Kim was one tough cookie. Also, Kim wanted it that way.
“I asked Paul to put me out early,” Kim said. “I figured I could get some points on the board.”
Kim got his chance to prove it. He drew an intimidating assignment in that first singles match, his opponent none other than Sergio Garcia, the heart, soul and also crust of the Europeans, their heaviest gun. To this assignment, Kim responded with birdies on the first two holes, and he was on his way. If this were a boxing match, the ref would have stepped in.
Kim's 5-and-4 victory was the most dominant win by a U.S. rookie since David Duval beat Jesper Parnevik, 5 and 4, in 1999. Kim himself was doing some cheerleading, raising his arms, exhorting the thunderous galleries to crack the decibel barrier. They tried.
But this was no kid, and he was not intimidated by the surroundings, the occasion or his opponent, as he demonstrated at No. 6. Garcia had hit his drive into some thick rough on a steep bank near a creek. He asked the rules official for relief, because his left foot would touch the nearby steps if he tried to hit back to the fairway. Kim had already hit to the green, and grew impatient with the deliberations and then went to check for himself. Finally, he said, “Do what you've got to do.”
Garcia got his free relief and bogeyed the hole, and Kim won with a par and went to 2 -up.
It was Garcia, and not Kim, who showed the strain. At the par-5 No. 7, Garcia hit a ball into the water, dropped, and hit the next one in, too, and Kim was 3-up. For the day, Kim had four birdies, a conceded eagle, and no bogeys. He never trailed and lost only one hole, and when he finally won, he didn't know it.
It was at the par-3 14th. Kim, 5 up with five holes to play, bunkered his tee shot, and Garcia hit on, 10 feet from the pin. Kim blasted out to 7 feet, and after Garcia missed the birdie he needed to keep the match alive, Kim holed his par putt, and turned and headed for the next tee. They had halved the hole, but Kim didn't realize he'd just closed Garcia out.
Kim was partway down the grassy slope when someone finally got his attention. He turned and listened, and then his face brightened. Then he raced back up the bank and onto the green, to the celebration.
“Today,” said Garcia, “I played against a guy who played awesome.”
The parallel was compelling. It wasn't long ago that Garcia was frolicking up a fairway, doing grand leaps, full of the joy of golf and accomplishment, and then to become a leader.
Anthony Kim had raced back up that grassy bank, to what might be the threshold of his future. The golf world had to wonder - was this a new leader taking his first steps?
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