NORTH BERWICK – The birdie on the par-4 16th hole at The Renaissance Club arrived on Sunday afternoon and closed a chapter that had run for 1,001 days. Tom Kim, 24, watched the putt drop, and when Min Woo Lee finished his round two strokes back, there was nothing left to wait for. The Genesis Scottish Open belonged to Kim, ending a drought that had started in the fall of 2023 and outlasted most predictions of when it might end.
Kim had opened with a 65 on Thursday, followed by a 66 on Friday to share the halfway lead with Rory McIlroy and Jordan Smith. A third-round 68 dropped him one behind Matt Fitzpatrick entering Sunday. On the final day, he made birdies on three of his first seven holes and did not trail from the moment he took the lead. The birdie on 16 confirmed it. His final-round 64 was the joint-lowest round of the day, and his 17-under total was two clear of Lee, who had made a charge from behind but could not convert what he needed over the finishing holes.
The last time Kim had won on the PGA Tour was October 2023 at the Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas, his third career victory. In the stretch that followed, spread across 53 tournaments through 2024 and 2025 and into the early months of 2026, he produced three top-10 finishes and nothing more. He made cuts regularly enough, including 15 of his 17 starts this season, but the conversion from contention to conclusion was not there. He missed the cut at both the 2024 and 2025 Open Championships and was not a factor at several other major starts.
The 2026 season had offered signs of a return. Kim finished tied for third at the U.S. Open last month, a result that secured him an automatic return bid to the 2027 edition and confirmed he could still play his best golf when the week demanded it. The Scottish Open provided confirmation of a different kind: that he could win on a links course in Scotland, under pressure from a field that included McIlroy, Lee, and Fitzpatrick, in the tournament that serves as the Open Championship’s dress rehearsal.
Kim was one of the more anticipated talents in golf when he turned professional from South Korea. He won twice on the PGA Tour before his 21st birthday, making him the first player to accomplish that since Tiger Woods in 1996. That comparison carried a particular weight. Woods, at the same age, was on a trajectory that did not pause. Kim’s trajectory paused. The years between his third victory and this one raised questions that his early record had not seemed to leave room for.
Sunday’s 64 did not answer all of them. What Kim did not say after his win was what specifically changed, or why the gap between 2023 and 2026 produced what it did. His play on Sunday suggested that whatever the problem had been, it was not visible in the mechanics: he drove cleanly, approached efficiently, and putted well when the moment required it. The wind stayed manageable at The Renaissance Club on Sunday, which helped. But Kim did not show anything like the fragility that had characterized some of his less successful starts in recent years.
The winning check is $1.575 million from a $9 million purse. The Scottish Open victory carries automatic qualification for the 2027 Masters and PGA Championship. Those entries matter. Kim already held a 2027 U.S. Open spot after his third-place finish in June. He now has major championship berths through next year secured from a single week in Scotland.
As Fox News reported, Kim made birdies on three of his first seven holes before the 16th sealed the win. Lee, who had been waiting for a Kim mistake that did not come, finished second. Fitzpatrick, who had led entering the final round, was not a factor on Sunday.
The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale begins Thursday. Kim heads to Southport with a kind of momentum he has not carried into an Open Championship start in two years. Birkdale is a links course on Lancashire’s coast that plays fast and low when the sea breeze comes in from the Irish Sea, closer to what Kim played this week than to the manicured target golf of a US stadium event. His last two Open appearances were both missed cuts. In the same week that Jannik Sinner retained the Wimbledon title at the All England Club, Kim has supplied Britain with a golf story heading into the major that closes the summer schedule.
What the question heading into Royal Birkdale is not, after Sunday, is whether Kim can still win. He answered that at The Renaissance Club over 72 holes under competitive pressure. What remains open is whether a single week on the links is enough to rebuild what a 1,001-day drought had been quietly dismantling.
