Fathers of Korean tots, male and female -- mostly female -- flocked to Paul, hoping to learn the secret. "How to make her great player," Paul says, "the next Se Ri Pak. I tell them, 'You love your daughter, right?' 'Of course.' 'Don't do it,' I said. 'Let them be children. Let them grow up to have happy life.' "
Proving he is his son's father, Paul leaves the bark on the money quote, when he says, "The girl golfers of Korea worry me especially. They don't marry." Of Kim, Ernie Els says correctly, not unkindly, "It's early." But it isn't too early to imagine a slot for Anthony in golf's hierarchy. Far behind Woods and his active standard of 14 pro major championships are Vijay Singh, Els, Phil Mickelson and Padraig Harrington, all tied at three.
Consider that Ernie was finished winning his three before Mickelson started, that Mickelson was finished winning his three before Harrington started, and that Harrington was finished winning his three before Sergio Garcia started, if indeed Garcia is the man on deck. Maybe he isn't.
"I don't mean any disrespect," Kim says, "because I know majors are so important to everyone else. But they aren't to me. It's important to me to win everything. Every week I play, I want to win."
He has his own notion of history: "Whether a player was immature, whether he made bad decisions, whether he partied too much, whether he did that stupid drinking at night, if he actually cared about other people, he is making history. My major goal is just to be the person my parents raised. I'm going to have a bigger house than most of the people in the gallery, but I'm going to try to let them inside the ropes."
Kim's a bottom-line man. Here's the bottom-line question: Will he be the one at long last to look Woods in the eye? Arnold Palmer was a decade older than Jack Nicklaus, who was a decade older than Tom Watson. Tiger is a decade older than Kim. "He's 12," Woods once said of the player to be named later. No one knew why Tiger said 12, but he said it unequivocally. "I have to give myself a reason to work so hard. He's out there somewhere. He's 12."
"You know what?" Kim says. "I would love to be that guy. I would enjoy being in that position. In the spotlight. That's fun to me. That's why I play golf."
Incidentally, he has not sworn off alcohol entirely. But his requirements are much less Homeric these days. In the flush of new dedication, he's in the market for a trainer. But a psychologist? No.
"Where I want to go in golf," he says, "I'm going to need a trainer. But I'm never going to be fanatical about it. As for psychologists, I know a couple of them. Nice guys. But there's this button I have inside whenever I want to tune someone out; and, seriously, he or she can keep talking and talking, and I won't hear a word. I can't hear psychologists.
I just don't think that way. That's work to me. I want this to be a game. I've won at every level. So, in my head, I know what to do. I just have to do it. At the same time, if the psychologists knew what I was thinking, they'd be flipping out. Actually, it might be fun for a day or two having some of them in my head, trying to find out who I am, just to see how hard I can make them laugh."
Who is he then?
"A big kid," he says. "Everybody would say that about me."
At the grocery store, he still grabs a ball out of the bin and dribbles it up and down the aisles. "I don't kick it up and down the aisles anymore," he says. That's his main concession to adulthood.
But only one ball ever fit in his hand. He'd hit it, hit it, and hit it again.
And he'd laugh and laugh.
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