Golf Post

While Michael S. Kim is hardly known on the PGA Tour, the tour pro now has almost 120,000 followers on X (Twitter). The reason for this comparatively high figure is his informative and entertaining posts on the platform. He is currently attracting attention with the publication of fineable offenses on the tour.

PGA Tour: Michael Kim offers insight into fineable Tour offenses

Michael S. Kim celebrated the only major success of his professional golf career to date with a victory at the 2018 John Deere Classic on the PGA Tour. It is therefore not surprising that the tour pro, who has played on the Korn Ferry Tour in the meantime, has not achieved any extraordinary fame with his sporting achievements. On X (Twitter), however, Kim’s number of followers is constantly growing: Almost 120,000 accounts now follow the US American’s informative and entertaining posts on the platform, where he reports on his everyday life as a professional golfer. Kim is currently causing a stir with his publication of fineable offenses on the PGA Tour, including slow play and vulgar terms. The 30-year-old thus provides an insight into the little-known details of how and why the PGA Tour punishes its players.

What’ll get you fined on the pgatour:
-Slow play (10 times in a group that gets timed is 50k and every subsequent time is 5k) (next yr, doubled) Many players have gotten fined, no one talks about it because of the potential backlash from the public. There was even a player that…

— Michael S. Kim (@Mike_kim714) June 7, 2024

According to Michael Kim, the PGA Tour penalizes slow play particularly severely: A player who is in a flight that is issued a penalty for slow play ten times will receive a fine of 50,000 US dollars. Each additional warning adds 5,000 US dollars. This happens more often than is known, but no player talks about it for fear of negative reactions from the public. According to Kim, the fine is even to be doubled next year. Other fines include vulgar language and swearing on live television, unclean handling of the pitch (raking the bunker and repairing uneven surfaces) and inappropriate behavior towards volunteers. There was a particularly curious case of a fine on the Korn Ferry Tour: There, players allegedly left water on a tree due to a lack of toilets, whereupon a local resident complained. According to Kim, however, all proceeds from fines are used by the PGA Tour for charitable purposes, reason enough for him to “maybe [use] more slow play.”