LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Before Thursday, Chan Kim’s season had more missed cuts than memorable moments. But on a steamy opening day at the ISCO Championship, he didn’t just find his form, he put a leash around its neck and took it for a leisurely morning stroll.
Chan Kim didn’t walk around Hurstbourne Country Club on Thursday so much as glide over it. Like a man on a moving walkway, waving politely at the rest of the field trying to climb stairs.
He shot a new course record of 61 — nine under par — and did it with the kind of casual brilliance that made you check the scorecard twice, like seeing your Uber driver crushing a violin solo.
He hit all 18 greens in regulation. He holed out for eagle from 123 yards out on No. 4 with a 50-degree wedge that might as well have been a paintbrush. He tacked on seven birdies — no flukes, no lucky bounces, just accurate golf shots that landed where they were told.
And then he parred the other ten, just to show he had restraint. If anything, he said, he could’ve made a couple more putts.
“Goal was to try and hit all 18 greens today,” he said afterward, like a man explaining how he likes his coffee.
Chan Kim with his wife, Sally, and dog, Agi (Korean for “dog) after his course-record 61 in the first-round of the PGA ISCO Championship at Hurstbourne Country Club.
ERIC CRAWFORD
That was the goal. And world peace is just a scheduling issue.
Understand, this is not your typical tour headliner. Kim, 35, has missed six of his last seven cuts. He could walk through Oxmoor with a standard bearer toting a scoreboard and never be stopped. But he’s won in Japan. He’s won on the Korn Ferry Tour. He once won a tournament in Idaho without making a bogey, which I’m not even sure is legal in Idaho (or anywhere else).
This is a regular guy. Earlier this year, he walked off the course at Waialae Country Club with a first-round lead and quipped “Please, just one time, I need everyone to be not so good at golf.”
We feel you, man.
Born in South Korea, raised in Hawaii, hardened in Arizona and the Pacific Rim, Kim is golf’s well-traveled mystery — a man who has quietly assembled a world-class résumé in airports the average Tour pro only sees during layovers.
He showed up this week with no fanfare, his wife, his 15-year-old maltese and a caddie who walked the course Monday and told him “This place is one of the best we’ve seen.”
Turns out, it was.
Chan Kim signs autographs after finishing a course-record first-round 61 to lead the PGA ISCO Championship at Hurstbourne Country Club.
ERIC CRAWFORD
The greens were a little soft. The air was thick but quiet. And Kim played the course like it was a familiar tune. Every approach had rhythm. Every putt had tempo. It wasn’t bomb-and-gouge — it was ballet. And when he walked off the final green, it wasn’t triumph. It was serenity.
When asked how to bottle a round like that for tomorrow, he shrugged: “If I knew how to do that, I’d play better a lot more often.”
That’s golf. One day you’re a short story, the next day you’re a bestseller. Thursday, Kim authored a 61 — his lowest on the PGA Tour and a tie (with seven others) for second-lowest round on the Tour this year.
Maybe it was fate. Kim said he ran into a Hurstbourne official at his hotel Monday. They got to talking about the course record.
“You should try and beat it,” Kim said the guy told him.
On Thursday, he did.
It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t loud. It was art in lowercase: one eagle, seven birdies, ten perfectly agreeable pars.
Tomorrow? Who knows.
But for one round, Kim didn’t just beat the field. He tamed the game — made it sit, stay and fetch birdies on command.
Copyright 2025 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.