Anthony Kim Hype Begins

Anthony Kim is the latest up-and-comer to be offered as the next challenger to Tiger. This time, it’s Ron Sirak mixing the cool aid.

Who are the leading candidates to mount such a challenge? Well, start with the defending champion at the Players, Phil Mickelson. Lefty, Ogilvy and Anthony Kim—last week’s winner at the Wachovia Championship—are the only winners this year on tour, other than Woods, who also have a runner-up finish on their dance card. And Kid Kim, the brash 22-year-old whose game is catching up to his attitude, is the only tour player with a trifecta this year, finishing first, second and third.

Mickelson and Ogilvy have won major championships, and they have won with Woods in the field. Kim has neither of those distinctions, yet somehow he has the feel of being the member of that trio who just might be up to the task of taking on Tiger. If nothing else, because he is young and in just his second full season on tour, he has accumulated less emotional scar tissue courtesy of Woods than those guys who have been on the receiving end of his greatness for the past dozen years.

Kid Kim is coming on. After missing three cuts in four starts beginning at the Northern Trust Open, Kim has finished second, T-19 and first—all at events in which Woods did not play. But the point is this: Kim is using the time Tiger is on the sidelines to build some momentum and acquire added confidence. That’s exactly what some other guys need to be doing.

I’d love to see someone step up and be the Palmer, Player, Trevino, Miller, Watson or Strange to Tiger’s Nicklaus. But I’ve despaired of it happening. There’s a sort of Alexander The Great quality to all of this … Alexander, who at the age of 32 wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. Tiger is that age now; does he wonder where his Watson is?