KAHUKU — Well, there's always next week for Kimberly Kim.

The reigning U.S. Women's Amateur champion said she will take a lot from what she learned in missing the cut in the SBS Open at Turtle Bay into her next LPGA event, the Fields Open in Hawai'i.

"I think you have to be more positive than I was," said Kim, who shot a 79 yesterday for a 36-hole total of 152. "I guess I was really negative the whole round."

It was a round that Kim described as being "so bad and horrible and every bad word (you can think of). Everything went wrong."

Age wasn't so much a factor for her disappointing showing, said the 15-year-old Hilo native, who now lives in Arizona.

"I don't think that they're (LPGA pros) that different about age and stuff. It's just that they're more experienced and know how to play and save shots. But I don't know how yet."

It showed yesterday as Kim compounded mistakes by making double bogeys. She had three of them yesterday.

She started the round by bogeying the opening hole again.

"I killed another drive and screwed up on the short game again," Kim said.

Then came the first of her three double bogeys when she flat-out shanked an 8-iron into the hazard at the sixth hole when her hair flew into her eye on the downswing.

"I totally lost it," said Kim after that errant shot, adding that "the mistakes were totally me."

She made the turn 4 over after failing to get a sand save at the par-3 eighth hole.

Her second double bogey came at the par-3 13th when she snap-hooked a 5-iron into the hazard.

She finally posted back-to-back birdies at 14 and 15.

"I decided I knew how to play golf again," said Kim with a giggle. "Then I forgot again," added Kim, after a bogey at 16 and a double-bogey at 17, the Palmer Course's signature hole.

"I tried a flop shot and went totally under the ball," Kim said about her first pitch shot there.

She didn't lose her sense of humor in recalling the misplay that saw the ball roll back to her: "I got a second shot. The first was 10 yards off the green, the second was 12."

Still, she remains upbeat despite not making it into today's final round.

Kim might have had negative thoughts during the round but not before teeing it up early yesterday morning. She was positive enough to start the day with only five golf balls in her bag. She lost four of them going to the par-5 18th with water fronting the green.

That caused Kent Chase, her caddie and swing coach back in Phoenix, to roll his eyes when he found out.

One advice he plans on giving her for next week's event at Ko Olina is to stock a few more Titleist Pro-V1s in her bag.

Another, he said, is to change her thought processes.

"Her deal is she's too worried about, what if I make a bad shot, (and) what if I miss the cut. And, lo and behold, as soon as she hits a bad shot, she hits more bad shots because that really upsets her because she's really worried about the cut," he said.

"She's got all the talent in the world and all the charisma. She's not worried about letting herself down. She's worried about letting other people down. That's hard when you've got to think that way."