Figuring When To Buckle Down

By Thomas Boswell
Friday, July 4, 2008

The names Anthony Kim and Notah Begay III sit side-by-side on the scoreboard at Congressional Country Club, tied in the high-rent district of sixth place at the AT&T National after their first-round 67s. At first glance, they seem to come from opposite poles of the golf planet.

No young player on earth is hotter than Kim, 23, who won the Wachovia Championship by five shots in May and already ranks 20th in the world. Don't say "golfer." Think of a 160-pound all-around athlete who's proud of his L.A. rough edges, of the basketball playgrounds with drug dealers on the fence and of the nine-hole muni course in Griffith Park, where he loved to hang out since he was a scrawny kid. That's where he got his distinctly un-PGA Tour 'tude, symbolized by that huge look-out-world "A.K." belt buckle he wears. And a new buckle just arrived. How big, how sweet?

"It's so nice I had to get insurance on it," Kim said.

He'll break out the new bling this weekend. Say "cocky." Say it twice.

Few players are colder than Begay, 35, who was once Tiger Woods's roommate at Stanford and is playing here on a sponsor's exemption -- not from Tiger, but close. He's not here to win. He just dreams of getting his once-gargantuan game back to the humble point where he can drag himself through qualifying school and get back his tour card. He's ranked 381st, but you could add a zero.

"It was one hell of a surprise for me," he said of his 67.

For Begay, who is still one of Woods's closest friends, this is the last stand, the final chance to leave golf standing tall, after years of back misery and surgery for a herniated disk.

So far apart seem Begay and Kim -- separated by a dozen years in age and light years in status. Yet, Begay once had talent comparable to Kim, if not greater. In his first two full pro years, Begay, the only full-blooded Native American in PGA Tour history, was a four-time winner and cashed his first $3 million in a blink. Then Begay, who like Kim is not a cookie-cutter cultural fit on tour, found out all the ways a glorious career could go haywire -- injuries, putting or just life its own ornery self.

If it wasn't chronic back pain tormenting him, it was the mean greens where he ultimately chose to hit some types of putts right-handed, others left-handed. Begay even landed in jail briefly after two DUI incidents and has battled depression. His story is a cautionary tale, not specifically for Kim, but for every golf supernova, about grabbing your opportunity while it's there, maximizing the good years, taking nothing for granted.

Luckily, Kim actually seems to know, at an age when many are clueless until the water is neck deep and rising, that he is at a classic crossroads where massive talent and instant success sow the seeds for their own unraveling. When told that vets say he has gone from Grey Goose last season back to Golden Goose this year, Kim said: "Whatever they say about me last year was probably true last year. I definitely am not that same person.

"I quit playing towards the end of the season because I was getting beat up every week by these guys. They weren't going out [to party]. They weren't looking for trouble, and I think I was. I felt like an 8-year-old out here. Free golf clubs, free food, everyone takes care of you, you can't do anything wrong. It's easy to get lost in that mix."

Yet Kim, it seems, didn't misplace himself despite a string of 25th- or 35th-place finishes that didn't satisfy his own sense of his destiny. Like Begay, who once shot a 59, tore up college golf and played Walker Cup, Kim operates on the assumption that he's headed to the top.

"Every week ran together. . . . That feeling of getting kicked in the face every week woke me up. Just making money isn't what I want to do. I'd like to win golf tournaments and be in the hunt," Kim said. "If you haven't even seen the course or played a practice round, you're asking to get beat. I'm not going to put myself in that position anymore."

Instead, he listened to veterans such as Mark O'Meara, who once helped the young Woods, as well as Jeff Sluman and Todd Hamilton. "I'm actually starting to listen to the great advice some of the older guys have given me instead of just shrugging them off," Kim said. "My demeanor has gotten better in all aspects of my life."

This weekend may become another career steppingstone for Kim. Few players figure to profit more from Woods's absence the rest of this season. Just as he needs to establish his confidence, Tiger isn't there to squash it.

"People want to find somebody that's going to challenge the top guys . . . I'm not just the kid with the belt buckle. I have a win," Kim said. "I'm playing good golf. So I'm excited . . . and hopefully I can be discovered here."

While Kim finds himself at the beginning of his career arc, Begay knows he's at the end of his and is, relatively speaking, at peace with it. He and Woods talk about their baby daughters, almost identical ages.

"Me and Tiger will be caddying for our daughters in about 10 years," Begay said. "It will be a blast."

One of the recurring patterns in Woods's behavior is his capacity for friendship. Once attached to you, he sticks.

"We've talked a lot more since he's in bed most of the time," Begay joked. Yet it is Begay who clearly gets pride out of coaching Woods in coping with severe injury and the prospect of long rehabilitation. It's payback and he relishes it. "Tiger never lost faith. That's helped me through some of the hard times."

A scoreboard tells you everything and nothing. Golf is the game that preaches: "It's not how. It's how many." But two men with the same "67" by their names can be at opposite sides of the golf world -- same talent when young, but with different outcomes, depending on many a twist of luck or temperament. And all of it condensed in a decade-or-so when everything that matters in a career is decided -- a kind of blur, a "mix" as Kim calls it, where you can get lost before you know it.

"If something doesn't improve here in the next couple of years, I'm probably going to call it quits," Begay said. "Playing injured out here is better than not playing at all because so many people dream about being on this tour, playing at this level and being at places like Congressional that, for me to sort of turn my back on that, I think would have been a shame, and I don't want to do that."

Why continue against odds so long? "Out of respect for the game and my talent."

Some learn it early, some late.