Lee brushes rebel riches
GOALS linked tightly to the PGA Tour that include emulating his sister’s major victories have ensured rising Australian star Min Woo Lee hasn’t been lured by the wads of cash on offer from Greg Norman’s LIV Golf.
Instead, the 23-year-old, who celebrated Minjee’s US Open win last week with “lots of good food”, is dialled in on taking everything he learnt from his first Masters experience into his US Open challenge at The Country Club course in Brookline this week.
Min Woo conceded the golf world was “crazy right now” as players, including Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, who have been banned from the PGA Tour, tee up in Massachusetts this week off the back of taking in millions of dollars from the first LIV event in London last weekend.
But Min Woo has managed to distance himself from the craziness, comfortable he knows where his future lies.
“I’ve just been playing, trying to do as good as I can on the PGA Tour. I know the world is going crazy right
now, but I have one job, to play as good as I can on the tour, which is the best,” he said from Massachusetts on Tuesday.
“I want to be on the PGA Tour and I want to get on that Presidents Cup team and, with the other tour, I can’t do that. I’m not getting too ahead of myself, I know what I have to do to get better.”
Already a two-time European Tour winner, including last year’s Scottish Open, Min Woo is more accomplished than some of his countrymen who took the invitation to play with Norman and walked away cashed up.
Travis Smyth is one who left the Centurion Club in London with combined winnings of $1.1m, his reward for individual and team results, more than doubling his career earnings across five years as a professional in the space of seven days.
But money is not driving Min Woo, or his sister, who even after pocketing $2.5m for her US Open win, the largest single prize in women’s golf, didn’t lash out when the pair went shopping in Dallas following her victory.
“She’s already got a nice car at home, she’s not home that much. She’s good with her money, she doesn’t spend it on materialistic stuff,” Min Woo said.
It’s not his sister’s bank balance that Min Woo is after anyway.
Watching her storm to a six-shot lead in the final round at Pine Needles, before eventually winning by four, showed the mental capacity he knows he needs to make the most of his abundant talent, which was on show when he tied the low score for the front nine at Augusta, shooting 30 to start the final round.
He came home with 40 but still finished in a tie for 14th, a more than credible Masters debut.