Grace Kim authored one of the great finishes in major-championship history on her way to winning the Evian Championship. Yet to those who know her, the Sydneysider’s final flourish came as no surprise.
Meeting Grace Kim for the first time is like tapping into a super-charged supply of positivity. Her broad smile is electric, while her manner is perpetually bubbly and, quite frankly, contagious. Her demeanour is so upbeat, it’s hard to imagine anyone in her presence not feeling better about life just for being around her. Twentysomethings sometimes get a bad rap for their perceived insularity. Not Kim.
“Having this as my job is something that a lot of people are very jealous of and I’m grateful for it,” Kim tells Australian Golf Digest Women. “I try to be smiley because it is a great job. You don’t want to watch someone be all grumpy, so I try not to be. I try to be happy.”
That disposition doesn’t come naturally, according to Kim. “I was probably a bit more internal [with it] if anything,” she says of her formative years. “I’d say I’m pretty hard on myself and I’m very contact-sensitive, so as soon as I hit an average shot in my terms, you can tell right away. I think it’s ‘a thing’ now too, but it used to be a lot worse. And I try not to be too outwardly with that.”
Whether natural or learned with time, such sparkle doesn’t tell the full Grace Kim story. While the ‘shop window’ says happy and easy-going, peering ‘back-of-house’ reveals genuine dedication and determination, the kind that has already brought major-championship success. When Kim dramatically solved the riddle of the roller-coaster closing stretch at the Evian Resort course to win the Amundi Evian Championship in July, she not only became Australia’s fifth female major winner, she also made a prophet out of her swing coach.
Count Khan Pullen among the litany of Australian PGA professionals who don’t get the credit they deserve. In this instance, the veteran teacher saw something in his fellow Sydneysider earlier this year that began a chain of events that would ultimately bear fruit in France. It turns out the coach is just as much a source of positivity as the pupil.
After Kim endured a lacklustre start to her 2025 season, Pullen initiated a conversation with his player that was difficult for both at the time, yet without it there’s every chance Kim would have one less trophy on her mantelpiece.
“I could just notice that she was deflated, just going through the motions a little bit,” Pullen says. “She had to go back and review some bigger-picture stuff. Where do you want to go with golf, what do you want to achieve out of it? Where do you want to go with it all? I said to her, ‘These are the aspirations I have for you: I think you can win major championships and I’d love to see you play in the Olympics one day. That’s what I’d like, but you’ve got to really look at what you want to get from golf.’
“I thought she was just – I don’t know if ‘ambling along’ is the right term, but she just didn’t seem to have any real purpose or enthusiasm. Probably through a little bit of a lack of confidence in not playing that well.”
Kim agrees it was a tough conversation on both ends. “It’s been hard, at least the past two years and then the start of this year…” she says, her voice trailing off. “Look, I won [on the LPGA Tour] early in my career and I thought that was a bit of a fluke. And I wasn’t really backing it up to prove that I was good enough. So I kind of spiralled down, mentally.
“I was losing what I guess the purpose of me playing on tour was. So I was just losing a little bit of motivation, and it got to a point where Khan noticed on the golf course. If you are expressing it physically, even though you’re not trying to, it’s pretty obvious that you don’t want to be there. It’s hard because in golf, you’ve got a lot more lows than you’ve got highs, and I think I was just in that little bit of a slump. And then you’re second-guessing yourself and then you go down through that whole rabbit hole again. Mentally it was tough, and I think unintentionally I put that on Khan, too. It was definitely a tough conversation, but it was much-needed.”
Gradually, Kim’s on-course results improved as the northern summer approached. Ninth place at the Black Desert Championship in May was not only her first top-10 result of the year, it was also her first finish inside the top 30. That fed into an opening 65 at the Meijer LPGA Classic in June. Even if a complete, 72-hole performance had not materialised, the pieces were slowly falling into place.
“There was just a bit of an attitude change through that period,” Pullen recalls. “I wouldn’t say it was a drastic change, but you could start to see that things were turning around and starting to head in a better direction.”
FRENCH CLASS
The undulating Evian Resort course overlooking Lake Geneva has served up its fair share of wild finishes at the Evian Championship through the years. Four years ago, Kim’s compatriot Minjee Lee flew home in 64 to erase a seven-shot deficit before winning in a playoff, proving that comebacks are possible.
Kim ignited her own barnstorming finish in July. After hovering in or near the lead throughout the championship, she found herself trailing Thailand’s Jeeno Thitikul on the back nine after a double-bogey on the 12th hole. Bounce-back birdies at the 15th and 16th plus a gutsy two-putt par at the 17th paved the way for one of the finest 72nd-hole approach shots in major-championship history. Kim laced a 4-hybrid to tap-in distance on the 18th to close with an eagle that forced a playoff with Thitikul (Lee missed out on joining them by just a shot).
However, all Kim’s hopes appeared dashed minutes later when the same 4-hybrid was struck with far less conviction and trundled into the pond fronting the green. With Thitikul safely on the fringe in two, Kim was left searching for a miracle. Fortune shined on her in one remarkable, rapturous moment when her pitch shot chased up the green, struck the pin and dropped for the most unlikely birdie. The Thai two-putted to send them back to the 18th tee where Kim collected another eagle – this time via a 15-foot putt after another pure 4-hybrid and this time to win. Such a frenetic finish bolstered the reputations of both Kim and the event, which has long been viewed as the poor cousin among the five LPGA majors. Not that Kim minds.
“I was grateful for the result, but all I was thinking was, OK, if it wasn’t meant to be, it’s not meant to be,” says Kim, who keeps the wedge that struck her magical pitch shot beside the Evian trophy in her house.
It’s easy to pinpoint the electric finish as the reason behind her biggest victory, yet Kim will tell you there were several moments earlier in the round that swayed her thinking. “The playoff was something different, something else, but I had a lot of par putts that were six to 10 feet, so I had to make them,” she recalls. “There were a lot of incidences where I kept the momentum going. I even said to my caddie after I double-bogeyed 12, ‘I’ve got nothing else to lose, so I might as well just birdie everything coming in.’”
Enter one of the best closing stretches in golf history. When the winning putt fell, Kim looked shocked as much as elated, her left hand raised to cover her wide-open mouth as the crowd cheered. Even a few months on, there’s still disbelief in her voice.
“Speechless,” she says of her reaction. “Honestly, I think being a major, one, speechless. The way I finished it, speechless. And obviously the whole playoff, everything, everyone being there to celebrate. I’m always kind of stunned to speak, but obviously very grateful in the way I did it.”
If she was stunned in the immediate aftermath, Kim was a picture of control in the heat of the closing stages. Even when her approach shot in the playoff found water, she shut out all the noise, both literal and figurative.
“The whole time I just was trying to avoid a lot of movement with my eyes, so I put the sunnies back on,” Kim says. “I just tried to say cool, calm, collected in that stressful situation. The whole day I was very inspired by Jeeno. She’s a great player, first of all, but her attitude that she brings to the tour, she’s always very smiley, very positive. Any incidents that are thrown at her that isn’t what she expected or isn’t good, she always has a very positive composure.
“I tried throughout the day to be smiley as well and I think that showed on TV. You try to breathe a little bit in that playoff situation. And yeah, it’s not something that you can practise, so I just made sure I didn’t show too much emotion because obviously at the end of the day, even though she’s a friend, she’s a competitor. I just didn’t want to give away the fact that, Oh, I’ve given up, which I hadn’t.”
What isn’t widely known is that Kim was unwell most of the week, actively trying to avoid coughing in her playing partners’ putting strokes at one stage.
“I try to stay on top of looking after my immune system. I probably didn’t do a great job leading up to Evian, so I caught a cold early in the week and then it just progressively got worse,” she says. “It was more so that tickly throat, so that’s really annoying, especially on the golf course when you’re trying to stay quiet over your opponent’s putt.
“So, I’m dying on the side. All of Saturday was probably the worst, but you could still hear me cough throughout Sunday. I even said to my physio on the Saturday night, ‘Don’t worry about it. I don’t need treatment, I’m just going to rest.’ And he was like, ‘Nah, let’s get you sorted for tomorrow.’ So I even masked up and got treatment that night. But after Sunday, I lost my voice for three days.”
Kim lost her voice but gained fame, both new and familiar. Karrie Webb, who appears to derive more joy from young Australians finding success on the LPGA Tour than she did when she dominated the circuit, was one of the first to make contact.
“We FaceTimed and she was saying how she’s never yelled so loudly at the TV, never jumped so high at the same time, so that was really lovely,” Kim says. “I got an Instagram follow and DM from the Shark, Greg Norman, so that was pretty cool. I can’t remember the last time I had so many DMs, messages, e-mails and everything.”
Kim can now enjoy the security of a five-year exemption on the LPGA Tour. Yet as Pullen notes, only two LPGA players entered more events than Kim in 2024, so schedule management will now become key for a different reason.
“It gives me the luxury to pick and choose now, and hopefully I’m not just going to be like, I can kind of slack off,” Kim says. “It’s more, How can I use this smartly to then have blocks of development, maybe some blocks of rest and recovery and then try to produce better scores or better results?
“We’ll discuss a smart way to balance it out,” Kim says. “Be at home, which I love, but at the same time it’s tough in Australia to get some good practice done. It seems like in America it’s just so much more advanced. You’ve got the space to do whatever you want, and I think the golf world is a lot different in America, so the practice facilities are a lot better, unfortunately. But at the same time I love being home, so we’ll see what works.”
The aftermath of an unexpected major victory can be twofold. “I always think, Is it going to be a launching pad or is it going to be the ceiling?” Pullen says about tour players in general. With Kim however, you get the feeling this is more the former.
“Everyone thinks that it could be a launching pad and it very much could be,” Pullen adds. “I’d already said to Grace, ‘I think you can win majors, but you never know when it’s really going to happen or if it’s going to happen.’ She probably jumped a step there. She’d had some good rounds in majors but you wouldn’t say she was consistently in contention in majors, and she’s learned from those experiences to ultimately win one.”
Helping Kim step forward so quickly is how she has already ‘found’ her key to progressing on tour, and it centres on adaptability. “Anyone who adapts quickly during the week is generally who does well in the back end of the week,” she says.
CHASING SOMETHING MORE?
There’s an authenticity to Grace Kim that shows in her play and her personality. Such self-awareness also isn’t a given among athletes her age playing sport professionally. Kim, who turns 25 in December, is acutely aware of the bigger picture.
“One of the biggest things for Grace is, she’s always had a purpose outside golf,” Pullen says. “For as long as we’ve talked about these things, golf has been about the opportunity to give back to her parents. Her parents have given an amazing amount of support to her and her golf and made sacrifices.”
Kim’s ascent is also an education for Pullen and the rest of her team on tour. “For me as a coach, never having been a major-winner coach before, there’s learnings for me in this place as well,” Pullen says. “So I’m along on that journey. But it’s really going to come down to when we get together as a team – probably at the end of the year when she gets back home – and saying, ‘Well, Grace, what’s this all going to mean for us now, going forward?’ And, ‘What’s your next bigger purpose for golf? Are you going to start up a Grace Kim charity or have you got a favourite charity that you want to give to?’
“Because I think that, for her, she obviously wants to do well at golf, but that’s not the means to the end. I feel like her purpose is more. She’s such a charitable and giving person… I think she wants to find – I don’t know if a higher purpose is the right way of putting it, but something more purposeful for doing it.”
Right now, Kim is finding plenty of purpose on the golf course. After a momentous 2025 season, her ‘launching pad’ is prepped and ready for another lift-off. It’ll be exciting to see just how high she can fly.
Short and sweet: A quick-fire Q&A with Grace Kim
Favorite golf courses, both on tour and not on tour.
“Not on tour is… I’ll flex a little bit: Augusta. On tour, am I having to say Evian? If it’s not Evian, Baltusrol. That course was quite fun.”
Which of the Aussies on tour are the most fun to go out and have dinner with?
“Steph Kyriacou or Karis Davidson.”
Where would you go?
“We like food more than alcohol, so we would just stuff our face with any good Italian/Mediterranean. We all like Korean too, so maybe Korean barbecue.”
Could the Australian Open have continued to work as a dual championship?
“Yes, but at the same time it’s just not how it used to be. [Playing concurrently alongside] the men probably helped us get more exposure, but I think we can definitely work separately back to where it was before, because I think we deserve the same amount of exposure, sponsors, experience. So I’d say yes, it could have worked, and maybe in the future we might have another. I mean, [the Webex Players Series] is working, and the girls do like beating the boys – and we tend to!”
The old chestnut – what score would a scratch-handicap male golfer shoot on the average LPGA Tour setup?
“For four days? I reckon at best, five-over. Three to five-over. The pressure is different.”
You’ve got a 10 footer and your life depends on it dropping. Do you want to hit it or do you want to give it to the best putter on the LPGA to putt for you?
“If you were to ask me that three months ago, I’d probably say, ‘Yep, give it to someone else.’ But I think now, I’m very comfortable with putting. I think I’ll happily putt and take the responsibility.”
