The University of Denver women’s golf team, which has chalked up plenty of notable accomplishments in recent years, apparently is on the verge of another that could pay big dividends in the near future.
Kimberly Kim, who in 2006 became the youngest champion in the history of the U.S. Women’s Amateur, earlier this month made a verbal commitment to join coach Sammie Chergo’s DU golf team beginning in the fall.
“I really liked the team a lot,” Kim told Golfweek magazine. “I liked all the courses we saw on the visit, too.”
Kim can formalize her commitment to DU when the national letter of intent signing period begins on April 8.
Assuming all goes as planned, Kim will be the second member of her family playing college golf in Colorado in the fall. Her older sister, Christine Kim, is currently a junior on the University of Colorado roster.
In Kimberly’s case, Oklahoma State’s loss turned out to be DU’s gain. Kim verbally committed to Oklahoma State last fall, but the abrupt resignation of OSU women’s coach Laura Matthews in October led Kim to immediately reconsider. And in the end she decided on DU, which finished sixth in the 2008 NCAA Championships.
Perhaps not coincidentally, another player who also had verbally committed to Oklahoma State before Matthews left, Canadian Sue Kim, will also play for DU. Sue Kim, currently ranked 116th among women’s amateurs by Golfweek, signed with the Pioneers in the fall.
Kimberly Kim, who grew up in Hawaii and moved to Arizona three years ago, has had a phenomenal junior career, with the highlight coming when she claimed the 2006 U.S. Women’s Amateur title in Oregon. She was just 14 years, 11 months and 21 days old when she pulled off the feat — 14 months younger than the next-youngest winner in the history of the Women’s Amateur, which dates back to 1895.
Kim, who also advanced to the semifinals of the 2007 U.S. Women’s Amateur, currently ranks sixth in the world among girls players, according to Golfweek. Among all the world’s women’s amateurs, regardless of age, Kim stands 45th in Golfweek’s rankings.
One of the players ahead of Kim in the women’s amateur category is DU junior Stephanie Sherlock, who’s 10th on the list. Sherlock tied for fifth at the NCAA Women’s Tournament last spring. Sherlock’s final college season will coincide with Kim’s first as a collegian.
Kim has been one of the world’s top girls players for several years. The fact that she’s a five-time first-team Rolex Junior All-American attests to that.
As a demonstration of her considerable skills, Kim shot a 62 in the first round of match play qualifying at the 2007 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship. The previous year in the same event, Kim’s first-round opponent was Denver’s Becca Huffer, the state high school champion who lost to Kim 4 and 3.
Kim once considered skipping college golf altogether and going straight to the pros, but she and her family decided against that plan.
“If I didn’t go to college, I don’t think I’d really do well on (the LPGA) tour for like, a couple of years,” she said in a Golfweek feature story a year ago. “I can’t see that lifestyle of tournament after tournament and traveling. That’s tough.”
Nowadays, having a long recruiting process behind her is a victory in itself for Kim.
“I’m glad it’s over and I can look forward to (high school) graduation,” she told Golfweek.
