Rookie Kim wants rest of LPGA Tour to sit up, take notice

Adam Candee

Wednesday, April 2, 2003 | 9:11 a.m.

Christina Kim cannot hold a phone conversation. Too boring. Too slow.

She instead reaches right through the phone line, grabs you by the collar, and drags you right into the her sock-rocking world.

Hang on tight. If golf's tradition is that of the country club, then the club pro's wild child just escaped onto the course, ready to force the exuberance of a younger generation under the starched white collars of the sport.

"There's always a party going on," said Kim, a 19-year-old rookie on the LPGA Tour. "There's something happening, in my head."

Something is happening on the course as well, where Kim played in the final Sunday group of her first LPGA event as a professional three weeks ago. She finished tied for fourth at the Welch's/Fry's Championship in Tucson, Ariz., serving notice that the youngest player on tour will not just be lounging with her one-year exemption earned on last year's Futures Tour.

"Knowing that I'm out on tour, and knowing that I can play with these girls has really enhanced this feeling," Kim said.

"This feeling" is Kim's magnetic vibrance, smiling and bouncing through a five-hour round and chatting it up with the gallery the whole way. Her eyes still grow wide at walking the fairways with the pros, and at being one of them despite only having taken up golf about seven years ago.

"What beats this, really?" Kim said. "It rocks my socks."

Everything in life is beautiful, Kim exclaims, and the game she loves just magnifies that.

"What is it not that I love about golf?" said Kim, a native of San Jose, Calif. "Everything about golf is something beautiful. The shots you hit, the thought process you go through between shots -- it's a mental game, a physical game, a spiritual game."

She knows all about golf's usually reserved nature, and frankly, Kim just is not concerned. Some veteran players, Kim knows, are wondering just what this teenager is doing out there, but she feels her outgoing nature is winning more friends than enemies. In fact, Kim said more than one spectator called her a "breath of fresh air" for golf.

"There's only been a very select number of people who have said anything negative or given off any negative vibes," Kim said.

Near her 12th birthday, Kim began playing golf with her father, Man, who was her coach and caddie then and still is today. For the first two months of her training, she never once struck a ball, instead sticking to a routine of 500 practice swings per day under her father's guidance.

"I had more of a sense of not hitting the ball, but feeling the swing," Kim said.

Success quickly followed for Kim, who won the 2000 National High School Open Championship and then made the cut at the 2001 U.S. Women's Open, eventually finishing 50th and attracting college interest from all over. Kim also holds the lowest-ever girls' 18-hole score in USGA history, an 8-under-par 62 at the 2001 U.S. Girls Junior Championship.

Kim dropped out of high school to pursue golf full-time, knowing that a pro career waited on the horizon. She eventually earned her high school equivalency, but when you finish second on the Futures Tour at 18, the future includes golf clubs instead of dance clubs.

"I love golf so much that I don't mind spending 97 percent of what I focus on on golf," Kim said.

Her lone Futures win in 2002 came with typical flair, as Kim literally sweated out a 100-degree swamp of a Sunday in New Jersey to outlast fellow LPGA rookie Lorena Ochoa on the sixth playoff hole.

"That was sweeter than any dried watermelon you can find," Kim said.

Right.

Try finding that one in the golf-speak handbook among talk of "A-game" and the like.

Kim prepped for the 2003 season in November and December by playing many of the courses in the Midwest and East where she will compete in LPGA events. She toured with her mother and father, even trekking through 3 inches of snow at Corning Country Club in New York for a round.

Some told Kim that the experience was wasted, that real tournament conditions will be different. Not surprisingly, Kim shrugged off conventional wisdom.

"I've gotten some criticism over that," Kim said. "What else am I going to do? I'm going to go home and get fat."

Maybe the strategy worked, as Kim blazed off the tee at Tucson and said she is "stoked" and "stunned" about her fast start.

Starting April 17, Las Vegans can judge for themselves at the LPGA Takefuji Classic, although the real answer swirls somewhere within the free spirit that is Kim.