2022 Sony Open: Top 10 power rankings at Waialae

Sungjae Im has left the Sony Open a richer man all three times he’s visited. It took some time to acclimate in 2019 when he opened with a 1-over 71, but he quickly found the formula to post 64-65-69 to climb to T-16th.

Those pesky 71s will do you in as that was Im’s closing score in 2020 to drop him to T-21st after opening in 69-68-67.

Im finally went sub-70 all four rounds last year. Ironically, it produced his worst finish at Waialae, T-56th.

Nonetheless, there are plenty of reasons to be bullish for Sungjae this week. For starters, the 23-year-old is coming off a solid T-8th finish at the Sentry Tournament of Champions last week. He made no double bogeys or worse with rounds of 67-67-65-69 to finish 24-under at an event where low scores were abundant.

Im showed no glaring weakness at Kapalua. He was top–25 in all strokes gained categories, including sixth off the tee (2.364 total).

Im had a rash of four missed cuts in the spring of 2021, but other than that he never missed a weekend last year. He posted six top-10s, including the win and solo third at the BMW Championship.

He hit a little lull in his second season after winning Rookie of the Year in 2018-19. Im appears on the backswing with a refocused approach.

He explained after his win in Vegas what’s going into the formula.

“Well my caddie Billy, we started a couple weeks prior to the Olympic games and he’s been a very good help to me, we’ve been a very good team working together, communicating,” Im was transcribed by ASAP Sports. “My trainer Andrew we started on the Phoenix week, but as I got to my second and third year on TOUR I felt the importance of conditioning and keeping myself stronger and healthy, so we’ve been working really hard and I’m glad it all turned out well. Buying a house in Atlanta, obviously hotel to hotel was not easy but having somewhere to settle down, to have my house and Atlanta is great to commute, huge airport, a lot of flights to everywhere, so it all came together very well.”

Im was 11th on the PGA Tour last season in driving accuracy (69.12%).