Tiger Woods understands struggle, and he knows golf better than most. He has plenty of experience with both. He has authored his own comeback.
On Sunday, Woods saw another one that spoke to him, both as a golfer and a human.
There was Anthony Kim on Sunday, pouring in putt after putt to chase down Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau to win LIV Golf Adelaide and hoist his first trophy in 16 years.
Kim’s comeback is one of the most unlikely tales, and it’s one that has resonated deeply in the golf and larger sports landscape. A prodigious talent who set the golf world on fire in the late aughts, Kim was a superstar set to blossom. He won three times before the age of 25, was a Ryder Cup star at Valhalla and ascended to No. 6 in the world before an Achilles injury in 2012 saw him disappear from the professional golf world. Kim has said he dealt with multiple injuries and battled “dark demons” and addiction during his time away from the sport. He rarely thought about returning and only started playing golf again when his wife, Emily, showed interest in learning.
For more than a decade, Kim was a mythical figure. His return was speculated on and hoped for, but he was never seen or heard from outside of the occasional unsubstantiated whispers that someone saw or heard he was working on his game. Kim only returned to the professional ranks in 2024 when he signed with LIV.
Kim, now 40, has said that it is a small miracle that he is still alive and he credited Emily and daughter Isabella with turning his life around. When he joined LIV, the game that once wowed everyone was a long way away. He talked about not knowing what modern golf technology was or how to use it. He looked like a man relearning the craft that once seemingly made him hover off the ground. There was little reason to believe he’d return to the winner’s circle. He struggled in his first two seasons on LIV and found himself relegated at the end of last season. But Kim has been adamant that he has been working hard behind the scenes. This is something he wanted. He earned his spot back via the LIV Promotions Event, which included making a birdie on the 36th hole to punch his ticket to the weekend, where he eventually finished third.
Two months later, the unlikely became reality.
On Sunday, at The Grange in Southern Australia, Kim’s 14-year journey — his trauma, his battle with his personal demons, his deferred dreams, his drive to climb back — all came flooding out as he ran away from two of the best players in the world.
“I will say that that was all the lows that I went through in my life that I got to dig out of,” Kim said. “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.”
Woods saw the kid who set professional golf on fire. The one he battled at Congressional. The one who beat Sergio Garcia in Ryder Cup singles and made 11 birdies in a single round at the Masters. But he is also the man that time and trauma have changed. There can be room for both.
Anthony Kim is no longer the brash, swaggering youngster. The years and the struggle have changed him. But that Anthony Kim came back as he rolled in nearly every putt he looked at while outdueling Rahm and DeChambeau. Woods saw that Anthony Kim, but he also saw a man whose story has a universal lesson that should be celebrated.
“This kid hit it so good,” Woods said on Tuesday ahead of the Genesis Invitational. “He was on an unbelievable run when he won at Charlotte, and we played each other — against each other at Congressional. He played unbelievable at the 2008 Ryder Cup. He had so much natural talent. He could hit any shot he wanted.
“Then to see him struggle in life and didn’t really want to play golf, didn’t really want to be part of golf, and for him to come all the way back and for him to win and to be as devoted as he is to his family, it’s a story in which — you just have to wrap your heart around it because of the struggles. We can all relate to struggles. We all struggle in life. The longer it goes, the more tough times you’ve had. But for him to fight through it and for Anthony to get to where he’s gotten to, from the low that he was in, is something that, as I said, you have to just wrap your heart around it.”
Kim’s comeback resonates with Woods because so much of what Anthony Kim said Sunday, soaked in celebratory sparkling water, sounded like what Woods said after he won the 2019 Masters to complete one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.
Their struggles are different. But there’s a throughline in their stories. Both exploded onto the scene. Both had their journeys derailed by a combination of injuries, insecurity and the temptations that stardom brings. Both climbed back. When they did, their messages were the same as were their motivations for deciding to make the climb.
“Don’t f—ing quit,” Kim said on Sunday about his message to people he wants to inspire. “That’s it. Don’t f—ing quit.”
“You never give up,” Woods said in 2019 at the winner’s press conference at Augusta National. “That’s a given. You always fight. Just giving up’s never in the equation.
“Just keep fighting. That’s just part of the deal. We wake up every morning, and there’s always challenges in front of us, and keep fighting and keep getting through.”
There was Kim on Sunday, sharing his winning moment with Emily and Isabella, explaining how his daughter, who was born prematurely, changed everything.
“I will tell her that before she came into this world that I didn’t feel any purpose in my life,” Kim said. “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. I just want her to know that no matter how bad your day is, if you keep fighting, you never lose.”
In 2019, wearing his fifth green jacket, Woods, who at one point questioned if he’d be able to play again due to debilitating back issues, credited his daughter, Sam, and son, Charlie, for getting him back to the top of the mountain.
“It means the world to me. Their love and their support, I just can’t say enough how much that meant to me throughout my struggles when I really just had a hard time moving around,” Woods said. “Just their infectiousness of happiness; you know, I was going through a tough time physically. There was a lot of times when I really couldn’t move, and so that in itself is difficult. Just to have them there, and then now to have them see their Pops win, just like my Pops saw me win here, it’s pretty special.”
A lifetime ago, Tiger Woods was on top of the golf world, and it appeared as though Anthony Kim was rising to meet him. When they walked down the 72nd hole at Congressional in 2009, Woods told Kim, “Just keep working hard and we’ll do this for many more years.”
Life had other plans for both Woods and Kim.
A combination of back injuries and personal issues led to Woods going 11 years between majors, at times only teeing it up a handful of times each season. Injuries forced Kim to step away, and a battle with addiction and his inner demons kept him away, causing him to hang up his spikes for over a decade and almost permanently ending his career.
There was a time when both of their best moments lived only on YouTube. Their legends kept alive by a blend of nostalgia, mystique and an inherent human desire to hope that the horizon offers more.
But struggles, no matter how they are defined, don’t have to be final. The wilderness can end. Dreams don’t have to be deferred forever. Pain recedes. Scars heal.
So, Tiger Woods made the ground shake one final time at Augusta National. Almost seven years later, on the other side of the world and on a Tour that didn’t exist when Woods last summited the mountain, Anthony Kim won again. Where and how it happened is a different story that offers needed context.
But as Woods can attest, it’s the climb that tells the story. What you do when no one is watching, when doubt is everywhere and hope has faded, that’s the most important part. That’s what makes the final step — the one Kim took in Australia — so meaningful.
