Nice shot, Mister Wonderful<br/><span class='hl2'>Kim has matured while keeping his identity</span>

Jim Ragan is the man who coached Anthony Kim at Oklahoma, or at least tried.

Ragan coached when Kim would listen, which was sporadically.

Even when Kim did listen, he often wouldn't listen to Ragan or to reason.

That's what made Kim, Kim.

Ragan often walked alongside Kim during college tournaments.

"He would hit some shots out there that he should just not hit,” Ragan recalled. "I'd be thinking, ‘Just don't hit that shot. Whatever you do, don't hit that one.' But he would hit it, and would pull it off with such a high frequency. Then everyone who would see him do it would ‘ooh' and ‘aah' and tell him how wonderful it was. As a coach, you're thinking to yourself, ‘Crap.'

"That was probably the most difficult thing in coaching him. Normal players, usually when they do something stupid, they get penalized for it. Anthony would pull it off. He can see stuff and pull it off. Whereas when most of us can see it, we can't pull it off.”

Kim is now hearing how wonderful he is on the PGA Tour, winning twice in a span of five appearances, claiming the Wachovia Championship and the AT&T National.

Next week, Kim will draw worldwide attention when he competes in his first British Open.

Center stage is precisely where the 23-year-old Kim wants to be.

To command attention as a pro is one thing, but to demand it as a college golf team member is another matter.

Ragan never publicly specified Kim's transgressions when he was in school, and a tactful Ragan isn't about to share any details now.

Whatever Kim's problems were, he appears to have acknowledged and/or corrected them, and is moving forward.

"My time at OU was wonderful and I would not trade it for the world,” Kim said earlier this week in a national teleconference call. "I have no regrets about anything that happened at OU. Obviously, there (are) decisions that I could have made differently, and hindsight is always 20/20. But at the same time, I think it's made me who I am today and I'm very content with my life and how things are going in my life. And so, if I made mistakes, I learned from them, and now I'm just looking to be better in the future.”

No argument from Ragan.

"It's been well-documented his maturity had to improve for him to reach his full potential,” Ragan said. "To his credit, I think he's done a good job while still being able to be himself a little bit so he doesn't lose his identity and turn into some kind of clone mold out there. I think he's done a pretty good job of balancing that.”

Kim promised to change while he was at OU, and he would for a brief while. More often than not, they wound up empty promises.

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