This article is part of our Weekly PGA Recap series.
When we think of the young guns on the PGA Tour, Collin Morikawa quickly comes to mind, as does Viktor Hovland and Sam Burns, and of course Scottie Scheffler, and it's good to say that once again Matthew Wolff is in that conversation. By comparison, Sungjae Im seems like a grizzled veteran, already having played 100 career tournaments.
But Im is really young, younger than all of them but Wolff.
Im is also more accomplished than all but Morikawa, certainly now that he has won for the second time in his career with a runaway victory at the Shriners Children's Open on Sunday at TPC Summerlin.
The South Korean blitzed the field with a closing 9-under 62 to win by four strokes over the 22-year-old Wolff, who notched by far his best result since returning to golf over the summer.
Im is only 23, and he won't even turn 24 until right before the Masters. He now has two wins, two runners-up (including at Augusta), four thirds, 20 top-10s and 44 top-25s in those 100 starts. He moved from 29th to 21st in the world rankings, still shy of his career best of 16th.
When you consider Im has been a Tour regular since age 20, playing in a foreign land and far from fluent in the language -- plus not even having a home base until the past year, staying in hotel after hotel -- well, it's fair to wonder whether he has had more to overcome
When we think of the young guns on the PGA Tour, Collin Morikawa quickly comes to mind, as does Viktor Hovland and Sam Burns, and of course Scottie Scheffler, and it's good to say that once again Matthew Wolff is in that conversation. By comparison, Sungjae Im seems like a grizzled veteran, already having played 100 career tournaments.
But Im is really young, younger than all of them but Wolff.
Im is also more accomplished than all but Morikawa, certainly now that he has won for the second time in his career with a runaway victory at the Shriners Children's Open on Sunday at TPC Summerlin.
The South Korean blitzed the field with a closing 9-under 62 to win by four strokes over the 22-year-old Wolff, who notched by far his best result since returning to golf over the summer.
Im is only 23, and he won't even turn 24 until right before the Masters. He now has two wins, two runners-up (including at Augusta), four thirds, 20 top-10s and 44 top-25s in those 100 starts. He moved from 29th to 21st in the world rankings, still shy of his career best of 16th.
When you consider Im has been a Tour regular since age 20, playing in a foreign land and far from fluent in the language -- plus not even having a home base until the past year, staying in hotel after hotel -- well, it's fair to wonder whether he has had more to overcome than most guys turning pro at a young age.
As we have seen all along, Im's game is diverse without any real shortcomings. We just saw him win perhaps the biggest birdie-fest on Tour. His other win was at tenacious PGA National, capturing the 2020 Honda Classic at a mere 6-under.
We can't overstate how hard it is to win tournaments at 6-under and 24-under, how different your skillset must be.
Im of course has been known for playing a lot -- A LOT. He started 35 times as a rookie in 2018-19 and again last season. But he recently took three weeks off after the Tour Championship – a virtual sabbatical for him and his longest in-season break since joining the Tour. This was his second week in a row playing and he will play at least a third.
Presumably he won't keep up the pace as he gets older, but this is an important week ahead for Im in the second half of the Las Vegas Swing. The CJ Cup @ Summit is a tournament normally played in Im's native South Korea, and CJ is one of his sponsors. So it's a full go for him.
Im has a new caddie, Billy Spencer, and he told reporters that he started working out with a trainer and that having a home in Atlanta finally is providing much-needed stability.
He's giving himself tonight and Monday to celebrate, then he'll turn his attention to the CJ Cup.
"Very meaningful win," Im told reporters in Las Vegas. "I know I won my first win on my 50th start, and to win my second PGA TOUR win on my 100th start, that in itself is a pretty amazing stat. It was hard coming, but I think today how everything went I think it was a gift from above. I played so well and I'm glad I got the win."
Pretty safe to say that win No. 3 for Im will not have to wait for his 150th start. Bet on another one coming this season.
MONDAY BACKSPIN
Matthew Wolff
When Wolff came back at the U.S. Open in June after missing 10 weeks to deal with personal issues, no one knew what to expect. He tied for 15th and was even on the first page of a major leaderboard for a bit. But that was his highest finish in his return until Sunday. We probably should've known that the "comeback" would not be instant and there would be highs and lows, and there still might be. But things certainly seem to be falling into place, with recent top-20s at the WGC-FedEx and Sanderson Farms preceding Sunday's runner-up. As mentioned above, Wolff is still only 22 -- college age. There are some courses better suited for Wolff's game, and he can now be viewed as a green-light option in those instances. Wolff is back to 33rd in the world rankings.
Marc Leishman
We've written often that Leishman's game suffered more from the pandemic than just about anyone else's. He fell into the 40s of the OWGR. But he tied for third this week, and it was his fifth top-5 this year. Which sounds great. And it is, to a point. They were widely sprinkled throughout 2021, but now he has them at the Fortinet last month and the Shriners this month. The confounding thing about Leishman is that just about every other week this year has been bad – only two other top-25s in all of 2021.
Rory Sabbatini
Sabbatini had a pretty bad 2021 until winning the silver medal at the Olympics. And now he has another podium finish of sorts with a tie for third. At age 45, these are great accomplishments, and he moved back inside the top 100 of the OWGR at No. 90. The thing is, we can't expect them to happen often and it's virtually impossible to predict when they will happen. Sabbatini has played 25 times this year and missed 12 cuts.
Adam Schenk
Schenk started the day in the final group and was looking for his maiden Tour win. He couldn't hang on, but a tie for third is still his best Tour finish, beating a pair of T4s at the John Deere and Barracuda over the summer. This is now Schenk's fifth straight year on Tour (he's 29), which is a good run. His best finish in the FedEx cup standings was 71st in 2019. Schenk is a fine player, but it's hard to envision him climbing much higher than that this season.
Aaron Wise
Wise is a guy we have been keeping a close eye on, and we've picked him with regularity in the weekly DraftKings article because we envision a good year ahead for the 25-year-old. He tied for eighth this week. He now has top-25s in three of his past four starts, two of them tough fields in playoff events, but this was the best of the bunch.
Chad Ramey
The recent Korn Ferry grad was making his third start of the season. After a missed cut and a tie for 63rd, Ramey tied for 14th. We see a lot of this in the fall, KF guys turning in a singular good week. It's a good start, but we need to see more before jumping on the Ramey bandwagon.
Hayden Buckley
We commonly see Korn Ferry grads on leaderboards in the fall. But for a guy to finish fourth one week and come right back the next with another top-10, well, that's not very common. Buckley followed up a big week at the Sanderson Farms with a tie for eighth at the Shriners, which means he warrants more of our attention than most of the other KF guys. This isn't enough to make Buckley a weekly lineup consideration, but it's a start.
Harry Hall
That wasn't Bryson DeChambeau at TPC Summerlin, it was Hall, who wears the same type of hat. The 24-year-old Englishman and Korn Ferry player was granted a sponsor invite as a former UNLV player. This was only his third PGA Tour start and he looked like he was right at home, tying for eighth. The top-10 won't get him into invitational fields the next two weeks but presumably we'll see him in three weeks at the Bermuda Championship.
Sam Burns
Burns was bidding for back-to-back wins and into the weekend it looked as if he had a real shot. But he ran out of gas on Sunday and fell to 14th. Frankly, when we see even a top-25 the week after a win, non-Jon Rahm division, it's a good sign that a player is developing real consistency.
Danny Willett
Pretty impressive of Willett to fly to Vegas the week after winning in Scotland and play pretty well. He wound up tied for 21st to cross back inside the top-100 in the world.
Taylor Moore
The preseason RotoWire sleeper pick and Korn Ferry grad tied for 24th, his second top-25 in a row on the young season.
He was the top guy on the DraftKings board, but it's a risky play because you never know what you're gonna get from Koepka. You don't know if he will give it max effort (other than in a major), you don't know whether he is truly healthy (knees, wrist, etc.). Koepka made the cut but finished 20 shots behind Im to tie for 67th.
Big-Name Cuts
So many top guys missed the cut, which isn't really a huge surprise in a birdie-fest, where lesser golfers have a better chance to make a dent than on a tougher track. Abraham Ancer, Scottie Scheffler, Webb Simpson, Patrick Reed, Paul Casey, Harris English, Will Zalatoris, Kevin Kisner, Jason Kokrak and Si Woo Kim all trunk-slammed. A few were more surprising than others.
For one, Reed. We certainly expected a better performance in his first start since being snubbed for the Ryder Cup. He missed the cut by a whopping eight strokes. He showed during the Tour Championship that he was largely recovered from his bout with pneumonia and whatever else, and that was more than a month and a half ago. Another concern is Simpson, who has been enduring a down year but could always count on this tournament for a good week. The 2013 champion here had finished in the top-20 four years running before missing the cut on the number. Simpson is definitely at least a yellow flag in the near future.
Rickie Fowler
It's hard to include Fowler in the group of big-name guys who missed the cut. Well, he is a big name, but not very good these days. He made his first start of what could be the most important season of his career and he fell flat with a missed cut. Presumably, he had been working hard to get off to a good start, but instead this was the complete opposite. Fowler arrived in Vegas ranked 125th in the world. He'll play this week at the CJ Cup – but he needed a sponsor invite to get into the elite field.
Lucas Herbert and Aaron Rai
We've been following the two young internationals who got their cards via the Korn Ferry playoffs. Rai missed his third cut in three starts. Herbert missed his first two but didn't play the Shriners.
European Tour
A Spaniard won the Spanish Open after beating another Spaniard in a playoff. But neither golfer was two-time defending champion and world No. 1 Jon Rahm. Rahm uncharacteristically tied for 17th while Rafa Cabrera Bello beat Adri Arnaus. Of the three, Cabrera Bello might've been the least expected to win. The former top-20 player had tumbled well into the 200s in the world rankings. He hadn't had so much as a top-10 in 21 months. He'll move to 133rd in the new rankings, but at age 37 it's hard to envision this as a career renaissance or anything close. Arnaus is far younger at 26 and entered the week ranked 187th in the OWGR.
Champions' Champion
Phil Mickelson
There's no fantasy action on the PGA Tour Champions but Mickelson won again, for the third time in four starts on the older tour, so it's worth a mention. It almost makes you think he could have value on the good ol' PGA Tour, but no.
