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Sensation Joohyung Kim wins his first tournament by knockout! Rickie Fowler saves his card

Joohyung “Tom” Kim didn’t give his opponents a chance Sunday in North Carolina. The 20-year-old South Korean completed his last 18 holes of the week in 61 and becomes the second youngest winner on the PGA Tour since the post-war period.

It is at the end of a marathon day due to the numerous delays accumulated this weekend that Joohyung Kim prevailed in the Wyndham Championshipthe 9th tournament of the PGA Tour in which he participated as a guest since he was not a member of the circuit.

He finished the third lap in the morning and was two strokes behind his compatriot Sunjae Im four years his senior, then played 27 on the first nine holes of the first leg to take control alone at the halfway point.

This victory allows Kim to obtain an immediate member status of the PGA Tour, and to qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs which will start on Thursday.

Now 34th in the FedEx rankings, he is guaranteed to play the first two tournaments, the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis and the BMW Championship in Wilmington, Delaware. To play the final in East Lake, near Atlanta, he must enter the top 30 by then.

Sungjae Im, who needed to complete the 7 holes in the morning that he hadn’t been able to play the day before, had to settle for second place alongside John Huh (67) 5 shots from the winner.

The carelessness of youth

Kim is the first PGA Tour winner born after 2000 and alone Jordan Spieth has done better in terms of earliness for more than 60 years when it was successful in John Deere Classic. The Texan was only 19 when he lifted his first trophy on the big American circuit.

” I can not believe itsaid Kim, before adding with a laugh, I had no idea golf was so stressful. »

Kim, will also go down in history for having started his tournament with a quadruple bogey, before ending his week at Sedgefield Country Club at 20 strokes under par.

Fowler narrowly, Wallace defeated

This last tournament of the regular season of the PGA Tour was also crucial for the continuation of the careers of certain players and the most worrying case concerned Rickie Fowler.

The former world number 4 and star of Ryder Cup missed the cut on Friday and his chances of finishing in the top 125 overall looked very slim at the time. 123rd before the start of the tournament, he got away with it in extremis, taking advantage in particular of the drop in speed of several players in a position to overtake him in the general classification during the last two laps.

If after two laps Paul Barjon’s chances were over, two other players have not benefited from the little help of fate and find themselves eliminated from the top 125. The Englishman Matt Wallace (124th before the start of the tournament) and Austin Smotherman (125th), who needed a par on his last hole of the second round and who conceded a terrible double bogey.

Wallace is the main victim of the surprise success of Joohyung Kim since by making the South Korean prodigy a member of the PGA Tour eligible for qualification for the Playoffs, he eliminates the 125th in the FedEx ranking where the player from the London suburbs finishes.

Kim chooses PGA Tour over LIV

For the record, remember that Kim was presented at a press conference with Greg Norman au Saudi International earlier this year when the LIFE Golf announced that it was increasing its investment in theAsian Tour up to $300 million for 2022. Kim had won her first title on the Asian circuit in Singapore at the start of the season.

Now that his lifelong dream of playing on the PGA Tour has been achieved, there is no doubt that the new 21st player in the world just behind Sungjae Im, will be part of the international team for the Presidents Cup next month at Quail Hollow.

The captain of the international selection Trevor Immelman already had an eye on him during the practice games of The Open à St Andrews mid-July.

The video summary of the 4th round

Le leaderaboard

©PGA Tour

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