16-year-old Kris Kim excels with groundbreaking performance in golf

McKINNEY, Texas — Outside of Sunday’s eventual winner, perhaps no one is having a better week at the 2024 CJ Cup Byron Nelson than Kris Kim.

The 16-year-old made history Friday, becoming the fifth-youngest player in the history of the PGA Tour to make the cut and the youngest in the history of the Byron Nelson. The guy he took the latter title from? Hometown favorite Jordan Spieth, who missed the cut the same day.

Kim continued his strong play Saturday at TPC Craig Ranch, shooting 1-under 70 to move to 8 under for the tournament. After opening with a bogey, he had four birdies in his next eight holes to turn in 3 under, but some wayward iron shots forced him to scramble plenty on the back nine, resulting in a pair of bogeys. However, he has learned plenty about his game through three days of his first PGA Tour start.

“I realized how good my short game is, how I can rely on it sometimes, especially days like today where I sucked at hitting irons,” Kim said. “Yeah, made up for it with wedges.”

Kim, from England, had his parents and younger brother following among a packed gallery on a gloomy Saturday morning in the Dallas suburbs. Kim said Friday his mom, former LPGA player Ji-Hyun Suh, couldn’t watch him play in the second round because of how nervous she was.

Kris Kim lines up a putt on the tenth green during the third round of THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Raymond Carlin III-USA TODAY Sports

However, mom was watching intently on Saturday, as Kim had some of the largest crowds following him during the morning wave. When his round concludes, he signed autographs for roughly five minutes before heading inside the clubhouse to sign his scorecard.

“It’s been really cool,” Kim said of the crowd support. “Makes it a little bit more fun playing with the crowds, in my opinion. Yeah, it was just such a good experience today.”

Kim’s goal coming into the week was simply to make the cut. He mentioned how coming into Saturday’s round, he felt a weight was lifted off his shoulders thanks to that pressure being gone.

With one more round left before heading home, Kim is thankful he gets to experience this with his family.

“Them being there makes it that much better I think,” Kim said. “Yeah, missing some school as well for my brother, but, yeah, other than that it’s still been good.”

When asked whether he has done any of his homework this week, well, Kim didn’t try to hide the truth.

“I’ll give you an honest answer, no,” he chuckled.