Michael Kim on the American Express final week.
getty photos
If you’re one in all Tour professional Michael Kim’s 108,000 X followers, you’ve realized some stuff from his feed previously week or so, as you seemingly did the week earlier than that and the week earlier than that. For occasion:
— Though Kim has swapped out driver heads all through his nine-year PGA Tour profession, he has remained loyal to his AD Pro shaft (“I think the kick and spin profile just matches great for me”);
— Kim has discovered that his newbie companions in pro-ams have a tendency to be “more interesting” than his fellow professionals;
— While ready out a flight delay in Hawaii, Kim sprawled out on the terminal ground and long-established his launch-monitor bag as a pillow (he posted the photo to show it).
Some Tour professionals are extra giving of perception and coloration than others on social media, and over the previous year-plus, few have been extra beneficiant than Kim. Though not a family identify — his sole Tour win got here on the 2018 John Deere Classic — Kim, who’s 30, has carved out a reputation (and a deal with) for himself within the recesses of Golf Twitter by delighting his followers with insidery nuggets about life on the PGA Tour.
That intel has included the whole lot from particulars heading in the right direction setups and enjoying technique, to a dishonest incident he witnessed, to — one in all my private favourite shares — how a lot free schwag the professionals get. “Golf balls: we get 3 dozen every week (4 for majors lol),” Kim dished last fall in a publish that was seen 1.6 million occasions. “I go thru 2 dozen during the tournament rounds (2 sleeves per round) and 2 sleeves during tue, wed. Gloves: We get 4 each week, depends on the weather but I generally go thru 2-3. Hats: 3 per week.”
Great stuff, proper?
Makes you marvel why Kim, who clearly has an acute understanding of what golf audiences need, was such a relative latecomer to the social area. As gamers similar to Ian Poulter, Bryson DeChambeau and (for higher or for worse) Phil Mickelson harnessed the brand-expanding powers of X, Instagram and TikTok, Kim solely dabbled.
That started to change within the fall of 2022, quickly after he and his previous pal, Max Homa, performed within the Fortinet Championship, in Northern California. Kim and Homa have been teammates at Cal-Berkley, however once they joined the Tour after school, they discovered that enjoying constantly nicely at such a excessive stage was no small process.
“For whatever reason, Max and my career, we never really matched up,” Kim stated this week from his hometown occasion, the Farmers Insurance Open, at Torrey Pines, in San Diego. “When I was playing well, he was playing bad and when he was playing well, I was playing bad. So I hadn’t really seen his following grow as much.”
But that week on the Fortinet, Kim couldn’t not see it. Homa’s homies have been all over the place, a byproduct not solely of Homa’s improved kind (he would go on to win that week) but in addition of his social-media prowess. By participating in a energetic, humorous and sincere approach together with his followers, Homa had grown into one of many recreation’s must-follows.
Tour professional posts to Twitter. And an awesome course-management debate reopens
Nick Piastowski
“I think that week was a big eye-opener in seeing the following that he had, seeing the crowd that he drew,” Kim stated. “Certainly that was a bit of a catalyst for make thinking maybe I can use Twitter or X as something to grow, quote unquote, my brand. That was probably the biggest start point of it all.”
Kim was off and run — nicely, tweeting. In February 2023, he bucked up for a blue test mark so he may publish longer educational movies. In May, from the Byron Nelson, he tweeted about “a mystery player or caddy” that had been writing AimPoint percentages on a apply inexperienced. On June 6, the day the PGA Tour and PIF introduced their framework settlement, Kim was one of many first gamers to share his ideas, tweeting amongst different observations: “Most of the players feels betrayed by the leadership.”
Of course, as anybody who has spent greater than about 7 seconds on social media is aware of, for all the advantages of X, it additionally generally is a darkish and twisted place. And the extra you set your self on the market, the extra you threat exposing your self to that gloom. Has Kim had to overcome a lot needling and mean-spiritedness, he was requested this week.
“For the most part, I feel like a lot of it’s been pretty positive, to be honest, considering it is usually somewhat negative,” he stated. “It’s usually like the LIV troll bots that are kind of commenting once in a while on the negative stuff. Those guys are sending out tweets to every PGA Tour player, so those are pretty easy to ignore. For the most part, I feel like everyone has been pretty positive about some of the stuff that I’ve been tweeting.”
At the American Express occasion, in La Quinta, Calif., final week, Kim was reminded of his burgeoning movie star when he was grouped with newbie companions who comply with him on X. Fans are beginning to give him love, too.
“Once in a while I’ll get someone from the crowd recognizing me, which as a kind of a regular PGA Tour player is pretty rare,” Kim stated. “Those moments kind of show me that I’m doing something good, I guess. I think it’s those moments that kind of surprise me, like, oh, my gosh, you actually recognize me compared to the next guy? Those kind of moments are probably the positives.”
