History Maker: Joohyung Kim Rises To The Top After Quadruple Start

Not many golfers make history after carding a quadruple bogey on the first hole of the first round of a professional tournament.

That is what Joohyung Kim did in the opening round of the 2022 Wyndham Championship at the Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, NC.

Joohyung Kim teed off from the 422-yard, par four, first hole. According to PGA TOURCast, he pulled his drive 268 yards onto the edge of a fairway bunker.

Sitting with a 104-yard approach, he only managed to get the ball 48 yards into the rough in front of him. Then sailed a second approach over the green, 15 yards from the hole.

It would take Joohyung Kim four more strokes to finally get the ball in the cup.

"“All I could do was laugh because just some shots I hit there were pretty awful. But I don’t know, for some reason I felt calm. It was one bad hole and I just told myself, you know what, I can still get this, I can still shoot under par today, and somehow I did”, Kim told reporters following the round."

It was only the third time in the ShotLink-era (2003) that a golfer carded a quadruple bogey or worse on a round’s first hole and then went on to finish under-par for the said round.

Hank Lebioda did it on Day 1 of the 2019 Barbasol Championship and Freddie Jacobson did it in Round 3 of the 2010 American Express.

Kim would go on to finish the round with a three-under-par, 67. He currently shares the lead after following up his incredible first round with a sensational round of 64 on Friday.

Joohyung Kim is a star on the rise. Currently ranked 40th in the OWGR, the 20-year-old  South Korean recently earned his 2022-2023 PGA Tour card after earning enough FedEx Cup points following his seventh place finish at last week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic.

Kim will head into the weekend with a real opportunity of securing his first PGA Tour win. He has six previous wins on various tours already in his young career.