LAS VEGAS — Tom Kim now has something in common with Byron Nelson: They’re the only two players to have won the same PGA Tour event twice in the same season.
Kim repeated Sunday in the Shriners Children’s Open when the budding South Korean star closed with a 5-under-par 66 to emerge from a pack of a dozen players who had a chance in the final hour. Kim finished at 20-under 264 in the 72-hole tournament and wound up winning by one shot over Canada’s Adam Hadwin, who birded the final hole for a 67.
Kim now has three PGA Tour titles in the past 15 months, and at 21 he is the youngest player since Tiger Woods in 1997 to have three wins on the circuit.
“I really felt confident in myself,” Kim said. “I knew that if I did me, I was going to be able to do it. I’m stoked to get this one.”
He won in Las Vegas a year ago, beating Patrick Cantlay in a playoff at TPC Summerlin when the tournament was early in the season. Now the Las Vegas event is still part of the same season because the PGA Tour goes to a calendar-year season starting in 2024.