Si Woo Kim is about to play one of the hardest rounds of his career

Si Woo Kim has known all kinds of pressure in his career. He won the Players Championship at 21. He’s played in majors and become a stalwart for the Internationals at the Presidents Cup. Kim also won the gold medal in the team competition at the 2023 Asian Games, earning an exemption from military service in South Korea.

“I was still scared as [expletive],” Si Woo Kim told The Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson in March of his Asian Games win.

But Si Woo Kim will face a new kind of pressure on Sunday at the DP World Tour’s Genesis Championship at Woo Jeong Hills CC in Cheonan, South Korea. Overcoming internal pressure is one thing. But to try to win for other people, for home, that’s a pressure that can be crippling.

“Last year, I thought I was OK, but it was super pressure,” Kim told the DP World Tour this week. I’ve never won in Korea. I want to win so bad. I had so much pressure last year. I think this year will be better, but it’s still going to be a lot of pressure from the home fans. So I’m excited to play, but also I really want to win too.”

Kim has done his best so far this week to put himself in position to be the hometown hero — to achieve something close to his heart.

He opened with rounds of 67, 69 and 67 to sit at 10 under through three rounds, just three shots off the pace set by Yuto Katsuragawa.

At the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush, Rory McIlroy shed tears as his valiant charge to make the cut in front of his home crowd came up short.

“As much as I came here at the start of the week saying I wanted to do it for me, you know, by the end of the round there today I was doing it just as much for them as I was for me,” McIlroy said after his cut-line charge came up short at the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush. “I wanted to be here for the weekend. Selfishly, I wanted to feel that support for two more days. To play in front of those crowds today and to feel that momentum and really dig in, it’s going to be a tough one to get over.”

To try to win for home, for the people who support you and represent where you came from, can be crippling. It can overwhelm, no matter the stage.

British soccer star Wayne Rooney faced the untold pressure of winning for home for years. As Britain’s World Cup drought wore on, Rooney was expected to push them over the line and give an entire country what it wanted.

“I’d go into tournaments thinking if England are to win this tournament it’s because I’ve won them it,” Rooney said in a documentary about his career.

“That was a lot of pressure for me to deal with,” Rooney said. “I tried to hide it a lot throughout the years and tried to take that pressure off my teammates, almost to not show that, but deep down, that’s what was always in my head. “I was always thinking, so I think a lot of the times you see mistakes on the pitch or like a red card, whatever, bad performance, that’s probably from me just holding everything in and trying to do too much at times.”

On Sunday, Si Woo Kim will face that pressure and try his best to overcome it, along with the rest of the field, and earn a memory he’s long wanted. He knows the mountain he must climb on Sunday. He knows that as the day goes on and his goal comes into view, he’ll have to fight his mind wandering to what might be and keep himself from trying to do too much to reel it in.

“It’s going to be my dream,” Kim said on Saturday about potentially winning on Sunday. “I never won in Korea since I turned pro … In front of the home crowd, I think it’s going to be really good.

“It’s going to be goosebumps.”