Kim falls behind on awkward day at TOUR Championship

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ATLANTA -- Anthony Kim's first clue came when he realized he was the only player left in the locker room Saturday morning.

He'd been shooting the breeze with the attendants when one of them happened to mention that he only had about 30 minutes before his 11:25 a.m. date with Sergio Garcia. The surprised Kim immediately headed to the range to hit some balls -- and chat some more.

"I was still talking to everybody, which I probably need to shut my mouth and go practice," recalled Kim, who normally allows himself an hour and 15 minutes to prepare. "But I was still having a good time talking to the gallery."

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It was an all-around awkward day for Anthony Kim on Saturday.

Kim through 36 holes

STATS Rnd1 Rnd2 Rnd3 EAGLES -- -- -- BIRDIES 8 5 1 PARS 8 9 14 BOGEYS 2 4 3 DOUBLE BOGEYS -- -- -- OTHER -- -- -- DRIVING ACCURACY 71 71 29 DRIVING DISTANCE 304.5 308.0 300.0 PUTTS PER ROUND 26 32 28 PUTTS PER GIR 1.538 1.857 2.000 GREENS IN REG 72 78 56 SAND SAVES 100 50 100

The happy-go-lucky Kim nonetheless managed to make his tee time. And while he refused to blame it on his lack of practice, Kim proceeded to shoot a 2-over 72 that knocked him out of the lead and left him trailing Garcia by three at 5 under.

"I wasn't rushed," Kim said. "My swing was terrible whether I sat out there for an hour or eight hours. I don't know anyone that could have fixed that golf swing. I was just trying to hit it in the right areas of the rough, I really was.

"On 18, there was about .01 chance I hit that green, so I said, 'Let's hit it in that bunker if nothing else.' I hit it in the bunker. So I really had no control of my golf ball, and that wasn't because of the practice.

"Obviously, it would have been nicer to have a little bit more time to figure it out, but that wasn't it."

Kim never saw the actual pairings -- just a sheet of paper in the scoring trailer that had the range listed as between 9:30-11:25 a.m. on Saturday. Only Kim read the final tee time as 11:55, and then compounded the issue when he mentally rounded it off to noon "so I actually lost five more minutes."

He vowed to be more careful before Sunday's 1:55 date with Camilo Villegas.

Kim actually scrambled well early Saturday, rolling in putt after putt on top of Garcia, the man he'd beaten in singles at the Ryder Cup six days earlier, to open a three-stroke lead. But he hit his driver so poorly, he simply put too much pressure on the rest of his game, and eventually it caught up with him.

"I'm speechless how bad I hit the driver," said Kim, who beaned a spectator and sent his ball bouncing off the roof of a hospitality chalet. "It was a struggle out there today. Obviously I hit 4 of 14 fairways, and when you do that on a golf course like this, you're going to make a lot of bogeys.

"I felt like I hung in there pretty tough and made some great up and downs, gave myself a chance going into Sunday. Tomorrow I'll be out here early and figuring my swing out, and I should be in good shape."

Garcia actually felt like Kim did well to shoot 72. The 23-year-old lengthened the lead he'd held at the end of each of the first two rounds early, but Garcia had made up the gap by the time the two made the turn. The Spaniard then broke out of a three-way tie with Mickelson and Kim with two birdies in his last four holes.

"I still feel like the way this course was playing and the way he was hitting the ball he still scrambled nicely," Garcia said. "But obviously when you're 7 under with five holes to go and you finish 5 under it's never great. But I definitely feel like he got a lot out of his round early on, and then he kind of lost a lot towards the end."

The par-5 ninth was a microcosm of Kim's troubles Saturday. His drive sailed left and hit 48-year-old David Whitfield, opening a gash on his forehead that brought the paramedics and a stretcher out. He eventually reached the green in three and two-putted from 16 feet while Garcia got up and down from the bunker for a birdie that moved him into a tie for the lead.

Kim, who bounced a ball off a rules official last week at the Ryder Cup, said the incident didn't affect his golf game, but he felt "terrible."

"Seeing that guy, I thought I killed him," said Kim, who signed a ball and gave it to Whitfield's wife before he was taken off the course. "It was an awful feeling to look down and see a golf ball sized impression in his forehead and it's cut open. It was probably the nastiest thing I've ever seen.

"It didn't affect my golf game. I still played the same way I would. I was hitting it terrible anyway, so I can't say that threw my game off. But obviously when you see that, you just feel for him and his family, and I was hoping and praying that he'd be okay."

The highly anticipated rematch between Kim and Garcia was a good-natured affair and admittedly lacked the drama of Sunday's Ryder Cup singles. It brought the fans out, though, and Sunday Kim will have the chance to win the third event of his young PGA TOUR career.

"This is what I've dreamed about my whole life," said Kim, who came from three strokes back to win AT&T National earlier this year. "I'm glad that people have gotten to know me for who I am. Feel like I'm a pretty outgoing person, so I let a lot of people in.

"It's been my dream to be able to help other people, and definitely when you're 8 or 9 years old you say you want to be rich and famous. I'm working on that rich part and I'm working on that famous part. I'm enjoying every second of my life.

"It's a dream come true every day I walk around on the PGA TOUR. I shot 72 today, and really felt like I lost a lot of ground. But I'm 23 years old. I'm playing on the PGA TOUR. Everyone in my family is healthy. It's an absolute dream."