Anthony Kim's conversation with Greg Norman ahead of joining LIV Golf: "I’m not here to be another one of the guys"
Anthony Kim's comeback to golf hasn't gotten off to the most successful start, but the simple fact that he is playing at all after such a long and mysterious absence is something noteworthy in and of itself. According to the golfer himself, he's not just here to play but to win.
Kim revealed the details of his conversation with Greg Norman when he was considering a comeback. He reportedly spoke with both LIV Golf and the PGA Tour but opted for a LIV membership. Kim said (via Golf Magic):
"I think about it [winning again] every day; I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. That’s not the person I am. When I had the conversation with Greg about certain expectations. I told him, 'I’m not here to be another one of the guys. If you want me to be, I shouldn't be on this tour'."
Kim said that Norman sees talent in him but cautioned him not to expect instant success. With stars such as Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and many others, LIV's talent makes winning hard. Nevertheless, Kim insisted he was not coming back to finish at the back of the leaderboard.
He said:
"I’m here to start competing for tournaments, and with some hard work and a couple of good bounces, I’m sure I’ll be there."
Kim's next outing will be this weekend at LIV Golf Adelaide. He has yet to win a tournament or even finish below par in 2024. This is his first chance in a while to rectify that.
Anthony Kim opens up on media coverage during golf hiatus
Anthony Kim removed himself from the golf scene over a decade ago. He was pretty much gone entirely, and that included having no presence on the internet. Kim was pretty clueless as to how much coverage his absence was getting and how much people looked for him in different places.
The LIV Golf star said:
“I was so far removed from golf I didn’t know it was that big of a deal. There was one instance, I didn’t have social media back then, where I got 200 messages of me taking a picture with a guy at a breakfast shop with my dog," he detailed.
Kim continued:
“I guess people started sending that on social media, and it became a viral thing. I was so confused because I was just having breakfast with my wife and dog," he admitted.
He said that it was such a normal activity for them to do that he was dumbfounded that anyone cared at all:
“Now that I’ve got clarity, it’s super humbling for people to even give a s**t," he finished.
Kim's journey out of and back into golf is not a common one. It was a rarity for someone to have just dropped out of the sport with almost no trace like he did when he was a PGA Tour player. Now he understands what impact he had on fans and is humbled that they even cared where he went.