Joohyung “Tom” Kim entered some exclusive company among the history of professional golf on the PGA Tour.
By winning the 2022 Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, he became one of the youngest players to ever win on the PGA Tour.
The PGA Tour has been around for more than a century. Many of the youngest winners happened in the early years of the Tour, but in the past decades, three golfers, including Kim, have joined the exclusive youngest winner’s club, as well.
Here’s a look at the 10 youngest players who have been victorious on the PGA Tour:
10
Francis Ouimet
Age: 20 years, 4 months, 12 days
Tournament: 1913 U.S. Open
Buzz: Still an amateur, Ouimet earned what is considered by many to be the most important victory in the development of golf in the United States in the 1913 U.S. Open. The young Ouimet, who was both a former caddie and a “commoner,” stunned Harry Vardon and Ted Ray of Great Britain, along with the golf world, with a 5-shot victory at Brookline Country Club in an 18-hole playoff. Ouimet, inducted into World Golf Hall of Fame inaugural class in 1974, is one of only four golfers to have a stamp created in their honor.
9
Matthew Wolff
Age: 20 years, 2 months, 23 days
Tournament: 2019 3M Open
About: In just his fourth start after turning pro, Wolff scored a thrilling victory at TPC Twin Cities thanks to a 26-foot eagle putt on the tournament’s final hole. He would defeat fellow 20-year-old Collin Morikawa and Bryson DeChambeau by one shot. DeChambeau had eagled 18 ahead of Wolff to take a one-shot lead. That lead would not last.
8
Joohyung 'Tom' Kim
Age: 20 years, 1 month, 17 days
Tournament: 2022 Wyndham Championship
About: Joohyung ‘Tom’ Kim entered the 2022 Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, on a Special Temporary Exemption. He left as a PGA Tour winner, in the FedEx Cup playoffs and as the second-youngest winner on Tour since World War II. He also is the first golfer since at least 1983 to begin a tournament with a quadruple bogey to go on to win.
7
Charles (Chick) Evans, Jr.
Age: 20 years, 1 month, 15 days
Tournament: 1910 Western Open
About: Evans is perhaps best known for being the founder of the Evans Scholarship Foundation. An amateur for his entire golf career, Evans won the Western Open at Beverly Country Club in Chicago as a 20-year-old. In 1916, he would become the first amateur to win the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur in the same year. Evans led that 1916 U.S. Open at Minikahda wire-to-wire and did it while using seven hickory-shafted clubs. His record 286 stood for 20 years. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1975.
6
Gene Sarazen
5
Jordan Spieth
About: Spieth became just the fifth player to win on the PGA Tour before the age of 20. Spieth was just shy of his 20th birthday when he won the 2013 John Deere Classic in a three-way playoff. He continued an amazing run in 2015 at age 21 by becoming the second-youngest player ever to win the Masters – behind Tiger Woods. He followed that with a U.S. Open triumph two months later. His third major title, the 2017 Open Championship, came just four days after he turned 24.
4
Johnny McDermott
3
Ralph Guldahl
2
Harry Cooper
Age: 19 years, 4 days
Tournament: 1923 Galveston Open
About: Harry “Light Horse” Cooper is golf’s original “greatest player never to win a major.” A member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, Cooper had 31 pro victories during the 1920s and ’30s, but none came in major championships. “Something always happened that I had no control over,” he once said. “I still dwell on the big ones that got away.” Those “big ones” would be the the 1927 and 1936 U.S. Opens and the 1936 Masters. In the 1927 Open at Oakmont, Tommy Armour holed a 15-foot putt on the 18th green to catch Cooper in regulation and a 50-footer on the 15th hole of the playoff to tie the match. Cooper had the clubhouse lead at the 1936 Open after a then-record 72-hole score of 284. He led the 1936 Masters after 54 holes. But victory eluded him all three times. Cooper was a teaching pro until age 93. He died in 2000 at the age of 96. Hard luck followed Cooper even after his death. Long considered to be the youngest winner in PGA Tour history, that record was supplanted when a PGA Tour researcher recently discovered the No. 1 player on the list.
1
Charles Kocsis
Age: 18 years, 6 months, 9 days
Tournament: 1931 Michigan Open
About: Long overlooked on this list, Kocsis grew up in Detroit and amassed a stellar amateur career. One of 14 children, he began his golf career as a caddie and he quickly learned the game. He won low amateur at the U.S. Open twice and Masters once. He enjoyed a successful college career at Michigan, leading the Wolverines to three consecutive Big Ten championships and the National Collegiate Championships in 1934 and ’35. He also won the collegiate individual title in 1936. An auto accident nearly ended his career in 1945, but Kocsis recovered and kept winning. He took low amateur honors at the 1952 Masters and played on the Walker Cup teams in 1938, ’49 and ’57. The first of his three Michigan Open (which featured pros and amateurs at the time) victories came in 1931, when Kocsis was still 18, making him No. 1 on the list.