Caddie Jacob Fleck first met Joohyung ‘Tom’ Kim when he was 16: ‘I knew at that point that he was going to be really good’

“Conversations with Champions presented by Sentry” is a weekly series from Golfweek in collaboration with The Caddie Network, where we take you behind the scenes for a chat with the winning caddie from the most recent PGA Tour event. This week: Jacob Fleck, caddie for Joohyung “Tom” Kim, shares some thoughts about their win at the 2022 Wyndham Championship.

It’s a stat that’s almost as twice as old as he is.

Last Sunday at the PGA Tour’s regular-season finale, Joohyung “Tom” Kim, who’s only been 20 for about two months, overcame a first-hole quadruple bogey to win the Wyndham Championship. He’s the first golfer since 1983, according to the Tour’s deep archive of stats, to pull off such a feat.

And at 20 years, 1 month, 17 days, the South Korean became the second-youngest winner on Tour since World War II – only Jordan Spieth, who won the 2013 John Deere Classic was younger.

He’s also—get ready to feel old—the first player born in the 2000s to win on Tour.

John Rathouz from The Caddie Network caught up with Kim’s caddie, Jacob Fleck, soon after their win.

“When it’s like that, honesty, I’m just staying out of the way,” Fleck, who started on the bag in January, said of Kim’s front-nine 27.

“I’m not surprised becaiuse Tom is a really good player,” he said. “I met him originally when he was 16 years old and I knew at that point that he was going to be really good.”

And about that first-hole quadruple bogey?

“We walked off that green and we looked at each other and we both smiled,” he said. “It was like, it was this feeling of calmness. It was like, ‘OK, that just happened’. … but there was no worry.”

See the video interview here: