Kim sank a 24-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole \u200cfor his 12th birdie of the day. After conquering the par-5 18th hole to set a course record at TPC Twin Cities, he pumped \u200chis fist in celebration.<\/p>\n
At 14-under (128) for the tournament, Kim led by three on Friday.<\/p>\n
Kim, 33, is the first PGA player to card a 59 \u200cor better this season. He has one PGA Tour win on his resume – the 2018 John Deere Classic.<\/p>\n
“I kind of remember thinking on 18 that you have to go for it, 60 or 61, doesn’t really make too much of a difference,” Kim said. “To shoot 59 today was pretty cool and feels like I’m part of the history books, which is great.”<\/p>\n
Kim is the first golfer to score a 59 or better on tour \u200csince Jake Knapp, \u200cwho did so at the \u20602025 Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches.<\/p>\n
Kim’s day began with back-to-back pars, which belied his \u200bupcoming round. He’d only dip back down to par four more times.<\/p>\n
He recorded the first of five straight birdies at the third hole and added another on No.9 to sit at six-under 29 at the turn. He added birdies at Nos.10, 12, 15, 16 and 17 before sinking his long putt to end his day.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, funny enough, some shots I didn’t feel like, supremely confident over, but that’s kind of golf,” Kim said.<\/p>\n
“I \u2060was kind of happy I got away with par on 13, but other \u200cparts of my \u200bgame, like my putting, felt fantastic. When you hit a putt and it does exactly what you kind of envisioned before you hit \u200bit, it’s an awesome \u200cfeeling. Felt like that all day out there.”<\/p>\n
First-round leader Ben Kohles suffered his first bogey of the tournament on the par-5 sixth, \u200bbut he carded three birdies and finished with a two-under 69 to sit three shots behind Kim. Kohles is tied at 11-under with Argentina’s Emiliano Grillo (67) and Chandler Phillips (65).<\/p>\n
“Obviously not as good as yesterday, but yeah, still played just fine,” Kohles said.<\/p>\n
Phillips had an impressive eagle on the par-5 12th to go along with four birdies. Grillo had five birdies and a bogey.<\/p>\n
World No.1 Scottie Scheffler, making his debut at the event, fell off the pace a little. He had been tied for fifth at six-under coming into the day, but he fell into a tie for 13th at seven under with his one-under 70.<\/p>\n
Karl Vilips (69-75) and Cam Davis (71-73), the two Australians in the field, both finished at two-over and missed the cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kim sank a 24-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole \u200cfor his 12th birdie of the day. After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-822541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}