TPC Sawgrass lived up to its intimidating reputation on the final day of The Players Championship – but some of its most spectacular victims were somewhat unexpected. As a stellar list of former winners, veteran stars and current leading figures on the 2017 US PGA Tour succumbed to the course’s unforgiving challenges, an unassuming young South Korean remained unflappable in the key closing stages of the “fifth major”.
Twenty-one-year-old Si Woo Kim was the only player to go bogey-free in the final round, his three-under 69 giving him a three-stroke victory at the end over runners-up Ian Poulter and Louis Oosthuizen, with the Canary Isles’ Rafa Cabrera-Bello finishing another stroke back joint fourth thanks to the tournament’s first ever albatross on the par-five 16th.
Kim thus became the youngest player to win The Players in its 44-year history, taking the record away from Adam Scott, who was 23 when he won in 2005. The Australian was one of the few main drawcards to survive the final round relatively intact, finishing sixth.
Among those left in Kim’s wake on a windy afternoon at TPC Sawgrass was J.B. Holmes, who shot 40 on the front nine, carded bogeys on the 14th and 15th holes, hit two shots into the water on the 17th for a quintuple-bogey eight then finished with a double bogey to close with an 84 and 41st place, the worst finish by a 54-hole leader at The Players.
Defending champion Jason Day finished with an 80, Rickie Fowler, who won the year before, closed with a 79, Rory McIlroy (complaining of a back problem) made a double-bogey at the last for a 75, and Sergio García, who had aced the iconic 17th in the first round and remained in contention at the start of the last day, stumbled to a 78. One day earlier, Jon Rahm had spoilt a so-far almost impeccable season when he shot a wild 82 and missed the third round cut.
That left Kim as the last man standing, although it wasn’t all that surprising an achievement. Four years ago, Kim played in the final version of the PGA Tour’s qualifying school and became the youngest player in the history of the qualifier to earn his playing privileges. A winner of the Korean junior amateur championship four years in a row, he could not become a PGA Tour member until he turned 18 the following June, and the card effectively went to waste. He spent the next two years on the Web.com developmental tour, where he won the 2015 Stonebrae Classic (only Jason Day was younger when he collected his first Web.com Tour victory) and gained his main tour card for a second time.
Just two months after turning 21, Kim broke through for his first PGA Tour victory, at the Wyndham Championship, tying the Sedgefield course record with a 60 in the second round and winning by five over former world number one Luke Donald.
