[Photo: Jamie Squire]
Anthony Kim produced one of the coolest golf moments in recent memory with his LIV victory in Australia last month. That capped a long and winding road back to the winner’s circle that many believed wouldn’t happen. There was no doubt in Kim’s mind growing up that he would get to the top of professional golf.
Kim was always a brash player when he first broke onto the PGA Tour in 2006, but as Brandel Chamblee recently shared, that confidence goes back much farther.
Long before the Golf Channel analyst and the now LIV star became frequent sparring partners on Twitter, they were both golfers trying to make it big. Chamblee, a former amateur star himself, was in his prime on the PGA Tour. Kim wasn’t even a teen yet. AK had plenty of talent and he wasn’t afraid to hide it.
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Chamblee appeared on Skratch’s “Dan on Golf” show with our former Golf Digest pal Dan Rapaport and discussed the first time he encountered Kim. It did not disappoint.
“He used to work with the same coach I worked with, Anthony Schriber. I remember being on the range once, hitting balls at PGA West on the back of the range,” Chamblee recalls. “Adam said to me, you gotta come watch this. I think he was 11 at the time, 11 or 12 years old. You gotta come watch this little kid I’m working with. I went over and I stood behind him. He hit several tee shots and he turned around and said, ‘Who’s gonna beat me?’”
Wow. Keep in mind, this is a kid talking to a PGA Tour pro whom he just met. Here’s the full clip in which Chamblee goes on to praise Kim for the perseverance he’s shown during his comeback:
Anthony Kim has ALWAYS had that swagger. pic.twitter.com/MbORjRZMmN
— Dan on Golf (@DanOnGolfShow) March 2, 2026
A lot of good stuff in there. “Who’s gonna beat me?” is tough to top. At least for one week in Adelaide, some three decades later, no one was able to beat that grown-up kid.
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