LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tom Kim's last big plunge into the major-championship spotlight was a muddy mess.
This one — crisp and clean for a while, but stained by a rugged finish.
The 20-year-old, who became a meme after his waist-high wade into the mud while looking for his ball at the PGA Championship last month, was on record-setting pace Saturday at the U.S. Open before things started to unravel.
He tied a tournament record by shooting 29 over nine holes, and added another birdie on No. 10 to get to 7-under par for the day and 6 under for the tournament. Three bogeys on the back halted his momentum and turned moving day into a bit of a bummer.
Even so, Kim shot the day's best round, a 4-under 66, finished at 3-under 207, seven shots behind Rickie Fowler and Wyndham Clark. The South Korean finished the day tied for ninth, 39 places better than where he started.
“At least I kind of have a chance to have a good finish tomorrow,” Kim said.
Billed as the toughest test in golf, the U.S. Open is not normally a good place for big comebacks. Kim started the day 11 strokes out of the lead. But this course has now yielded four nine-hole scores of 30 along with Kim's 29. Xander Schauffele and Fowler shot their 30s as part of U.S. Open record-setting rounds of 62 on opening day.
For a while on a breezy, sun-splashed afternoon in SoCal, Kim looked as if he might go even lower than that.
“Didn't miss a putt, didn't miss a shot,” he said when asked to explain his torrid start.
It was difficult to block all thoughts of a 62, or the leaderboard, or winning.
"I'm thinking, ‘If I can keep this going, have a good finish, and if the leaders kind of stumble, I might have a chance to be really close up there on Sunday,’” he conceded. “But it was a really short thought because I still had the hardest part of the golf course right in front of me.”
Kim's round underscored the truth about LACC. Through three rounds, the front nine had yielded 733 birdies or better; the back had yielded 429. Through three rounds, Kim himself has made 10 of his birdies on the front and four on the back.
Of his three bogeys over his back-nine 37, none hurt more than the 4 he took on the 81-yard par-3 15th. His wedge shot got plugged in the bunker fronting the green.
“A really simple wedge shot,” he said. “But with the wind kind of going down to left, you’ve got to really hit it at the right time."
Instead of dwelling on what might have been, he was taking the day as a positive. He vaulted up the leaderboard, set himself up for a late tee time Sunday and put himself in position to contend if he gets off to another great start.
Bonus: His white pants stayed white the entire day.
“If you told me at the start of the day” that he'd shoot 66, Kim said, “I'd take that score.”
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