Lee drops to ninth in Aussie
But Kiwi golfer earns first LIV points of season as he fights to guarantee his spot in 2025
Danny Lee’s quest for a second LIV Golf title has fallen short after early bogeys cost his chance of victory at the Adelaide event yesterday.
Starting one shot behind overnight leader and eventual winner Brendan Steele, Lee had two bogeys in the opening eight holes which all but ended his hopes on a birdie-friendly course at The Grange Golf Course.
Lee sat one shot back from playing partner Steele on the fifth tee following a steady start of pars. But when he walked off the eighth green, missed putts for birdie and pars saw him drop two shots over the four holes, while Steele birdied all of them, pulling six shots clear.
Lee found some form on the back nine to shoot a one-under 71 and finish at 14-under in a share of ninth. It’s his best finish of the season and earns him US$340,000 ($572,400).
Steele held off late challenges from Stingers duo Louis Oosthuizen (17-under) and Charl Schwartzel (16-under), Jon Rahm (16-under) and HyFlyers teammate Andy Ogletree (16-under) to earn his maiden LIV Golf title — winning by one shot.
Lee will take plenty of confidence despite not putting together three solid days after shooting rounds of 64 and 67 to sit one back at the start of the final round.
He without a doubt played his best golf of the six events so far this season. The 33-year-old earned six points yesterday, his final-round score costing him as he fell back in the points list of all the players tied for ninth.
Lee underwent wrist surgery at the end of last season and struggled to find form early in the season. He won a tournament in his maiden season last year, LIV Golf Tucson, which came with a US$4 million first-place cheque, but coming into Adelaide had yet to record a top-24 finish in the opening five starts of 2024.
Yesterday’s result gets Lee on the board almost halfway into the season, with the players sitting in the bottom half of the season-ending standings facing a possible cut from the league next year.
“Playing good golf takes care of a lot of stuff, and I don’t like to think about that kind of stuff,” Lee said after sitting near the top of the leaderboard on day one at Adelaide.
“You can’t get too caught up in that kind of stuff. I feel like that’s only putting a lot of pressure on yourself, so you’ve just got to let it go and keep your head down, and just keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
The next tournament is in Singapore, starting Friday.
● It’s strange to think shooting seven-under-par in a round would not improve a golfer’s position in a tournament but that has been the case for Ryan Fox and Garrick Higgo in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.
In their third round, the pairing carded five birdies and an eagle to finish with a 65 in a blemish-free 18 at TPC Louisiana. But given the format of the tournament, there are plenty of low scores being made, and they ended the day in a seven-way tie for 27th.
Round three saw the teams event return to the four-ball format in which both golfers play their own ball and the team takes the better of the two scores. The round got off to a great start for the Kiwi and South African pairing, with a birdie on the first hole. They added birdies on the fourth and sixth, before carding an eagle on the par-five seventh.
That saw them sit five-under at the turn. However, they weren’t able to go on with things from there, with just two birdies on the back nine to finish seven under. Fox and Higgo sit at 16 under, seven shots behind leaders Zac Blair and Patrick Fishburn.
Blair and Fishburn took their opportunities on the course all day as they claimed the outright lead on 23-under after three rounds, surging 10 places up the leaderboard with a 12-under 60 which included 10 birdies and an eagle.
They sit one shot ahead of Luke List and Henrik Norlander, who went 10 under for their third round to move to 22 under for the week, with Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, and Mark Hubbard and Ryan Brehm one shot further back in a tie for third.
This morning will see the teams return to foursomes for the final round, with players taking alternate shots rather than each playing their own ball.