Tom Kim

Tom Kim was born Kim Joo-hyung on 21 June 2002 in Seoul. His father, Chang-ik Kim, played professionally before becoming a teaching pro, so the family moved with golf — stretches in China, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The English nickname stuck early from Thomas the Tank Engine; by his mid-teens he was already winning amateurs in the Philippines and turning professional at 16.

The Asia ladder came first. He won on the Asian Development Tour, claimed the 2021 Korean Tour Order of Merit as a teenager, then topped the 2020–21–22 Asian Tour money list after a Singapore swing that locked the crown. Special temporary PGA Tour membership followed in 2022; a week after locking a full card at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, he closed with a 61 to win the Wyndham Championship — the first Tour winner born after 2000, and only the second-youngest since World War II behind Jordan Spieth.

Two Shriners Children’s Open titles (2022 and 2023) made him a three-time Tour winner before 22 and a Presidents Cup International Team regular in 2022 and 2024. A lean stretch dropped him far enough that he needed final qualifying for the 2026 U.S. Open; at Shinnecock Hills he finished solo third on his 24th birthday. Three weeks later he ended a 1,001-day win drought with a bogey-free 64 to win the Genesis Scottish Open — a fourth PGA Tour title and a jump back into the world’s top 35.

Korea’s women’s LPGA machine has been thick for a generation; the men’s PGA Tour wave is thinner and still unfinished. Kim is its most visible young export — fluent across English and Korean calendars, Titleist and Nike on the bag and kit, and still racing an Olympic or Asian Games medal that would clear military-service risk before his late twenties. The résumé already proves the Asian Tour–to–PGA path can mint stars. The open question is whether the next five years add a major, or whether military timing interrupts the climb.