BREMERTON, Wash. - Don't be amazed if Alice Kim and her driver become inseparable, taking it with her everywhere she goes and never letting it out of her sight.

The Gonzaga University junior women's golfer, who sits atop the West Coast Conference Championship leaderboard following Monday's opening round, didn't know as recently as last Friday if she would have her new-found friend when she teed things up Monday at Gold Mountain Golf Club.

Following Gonzaga's regular-season finale in Yorba Linda, Calif., at The Gold Rush last Tuesday, Kim picked up her golf clubs as always at the baggage carousel of Spokane International Airport and didn't think another thing about them until the next day.

That's when she discovered her new driver - which she acquired for the last two tournaments of the regular-season - was nearly in two pieces.

"I opened it (my bag) Wednesday to go to practice. My head cover was dangling off my shaft. I was a little calmer than I expected to be," she said, now being able to laugh about the incident. "I drove to coach's (head coach Brad Rickel) office with my club, he wasn't there and I kind of panicked at that point."

But a quick phone call to Rickel put her mind at ease.

"I called him and told him I don't know what to do, my driver is broken. He said we'll take care of it; we'll get it done. Don't worry," she recalled.

So, she listened to her coach and didn't think about it until she got his phone call Friday night.

"I didn't worry about it until Friday when coach told me he had it, gave it to me at 6 p.m. right before the (Gonzaga) baseball game," she said. "I went straight to the practice facility and tried like 50 drives and it felt pretty good."

"I knew we had to get that driver back in her hand because her confidence was high," Rickel said. "We got it fixed here and she had it in time."

Kim said the new shaft is "a little stiffer, but I like that. I feel I can control it better."

She explained she started using the new driver about three weeks ago trying to get her game back on track.

"The driver's stiffness tells you how you are going to swing throughout the day. You start with a driver and if it's a stiff driver and your iron shafts don't match that, you have to swing a little softer. That's what this driver did. It helped me change my swing speed a little softer at a nice comfortable speed and from there I can use my irons. That's why it helps so much. We found that out after Hawai'i," she said of her rounds of 78-75-78 at the Dr. Donnis Thompson Invitational which sent her looking for answers.

But all's well that ends well - at least so far. The WCC leaderboard Monday bears that out.