Former Cal golfer Michael Kim carved out a place in PGA Tour history on Friday in Laine, Minnesota, rolling in a 24-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to post a 59 at the 3M Open.
Kim’s round made him the 15th player ever to card a 59 on the PGA Tour, leaving him one shot shy of Jim Furyk’s all-time single-round record of 58, which Furyk shot at the 2016 Travelers Championship.
Kim’s second round at TPC Twin Cities was a clean one from start to finish. He made birdies on his last four holes and avoided a bogey entirely, turning in a 12-under-par round that pushed him to 14-under for the tournament. That puts him three strokes clear of the field heading into Saturday’s third round.
“Today was an awesome day, but still, I'm only halfway there so still need to kind of get focused up for the weekend,” said Kim.
The round also put Kim in rare company in a more recent sense. He became the fourth golfer since 2024 to shoot 59 on the PGA Tour, following Jake Knapp, who did it at the 2025 Cognizant Classic.
Kim’s scoring barrage started early and never really let up. He birdied Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 on the front nine, then kept the pressure on with birdies at 10, 12, 15, 16 and 17 to set up a shot at history on the final hole.
“I just kind of told myself like, 'Hey, this is the way, this is the moment to get into the history books and let's go for it, let's not try to luck our way into it, let's try to step up and hit some really good shots,'" he said.
On 18, he was left with an uphill putt from the fringe for birdie and the chance to finish the round at 59.
“I tend to leave those short when it's that uphill and I just, last thing was just get it there, just don't leave it short,” said Kim.
He didn’t. The putt dropped, Kim raised his hands and punched the air, and his previous low round on the PGA Tour was suddenly old news. Before Friday, his best tour round was a 62.
“When you hit a putt and it does exactly what you kind of envisioned before you hit it, it's an awesome feeling,” Kim said. “Felt like that all day out there.”
Kim is still chasing his second PGA Tour victory after winning the 2018 John Deere Classic, and Friday’s masterpiece came after a week in which he nearly skipped the 3M Open altogether.
He had played in tournaments for the previous five weeks and had considered sitting this one out. Instead, he went home after missing the cut at the Open, took a couple of days to relax, and came to Minnesota.
“I went home after I missed the cut at the Open, just spent a couple days relaxing and came up here and really happy I did," he said.
The performance also carried a Cal connection. Kim attended Cal from 2011 to December of 2013, played two and a half seasons for the Bears before turning pro during his junior year, and became Cal’s first national men’s golf player of the year in 2012-13.
He was also a teammate of Max Homa, who was at Cal from 2009 to 2013. The two were part of a Bears team that finished the regular season ranked No. 1 in the country in 2013.
Homa, however, didn’t make it through the weekend at the 3M Open. He shot a 3-over-par 74 on Friday and missed the cut after finishing the first two rounds at 4-over.
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