Rising LPGA player opens up about goals hit and missed in 2025

On Christmas Day, Auston Kim posted a video that surely surprised a few golf fans. The message screamed off the page in large font: "I hated golf as a kid."

"But now?" the video teased ... "I can't get enough of it."

Kim, 25, put together a memorable 2025 season on the LPGA, most notably finishing T-2 at the KPMG Women's PGA in Texas.

On Instagram, the former Vanderbilt player revealed the list of goals she'd written out for herself for 2025 and then stacked up her results. For example, she wanted a sub-71 scoring average in 2025. She met that goal with an 70.65 average over 86 rounds.

While she didn't win, she did qualify for the CME Group Tour Championship and also soared into the top 100. At this time last year, Kim ranked 155th in the world. She's now 42nd.

Kim closed out last season with a T-4 at The Annika and a share of seventh in her CME debut.

"I keep looking back to my highlights this year, where the golf came together and the game was effortlessly fun," Kim wrote in her online post. "There were more of these weeks than there were last year, which is awesome. I also remember the low moments. Where each shot became life or death. Every mistake felt like the end of the world."

In a subsequent post, a thoughtful Kim went through her camera roll and offered honest reflections of various points in the season, highlighting how the failures pushed her forward.

"Can’t wait to get better in 2026," she wrote. "The joy is in the journey!"