It was about 8 p.m. on the East Coast on Thursday, and the first round of the PGA 105 Championship was in its final hour before darkness stopped play for the day after frostbite delayed the tees early in the first sets. With Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott and a few others still pushing to usurp club leader Bryson DeChambeau on the 18th hole, the crowd was already thinning out.
Then Tom Kim fell into the mud.
No, literally, he fell into the mud.
The messy errors occurred after Kim hit the tee into the fairway’s right creek on the par-4 sixth hole. The cameras didn’t catch Kim until after he actually crawled into the bank after apparently reaching for his golf ball, and when he got out of the tall grass he was covered in black mud from his thighs down, perhaps the results of some ignorant person. Steps on soft ground.
But Kim didn’t seem too concerned. He immediately went down the stream and came back, this time to rinse it off. Then he swapped his shirt for his jacket, kept his legs rolled up, put his shoes and socks back on, and continued playing with the holes.
After the fall, Kim continued to hole up, which was the 15th on the day, to drop to the 3rd.
As one can imagine, Kim gets muddy during a major tournament. Golf Twitter was quick to post screenshots and memes. Here are some of the funniest ones:
