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MIND / JOURNEYS
‘It Took Me a While to Love Golf’ My sister is a major champion, but my path to
the following week. I missed the cut but got some more starts on the PGA Tour. Travelling all the time and being away from friends gets hard, but I’m a gamer; I like Call of Duty. I travel with my gam- ing laptop so that I can play wherever I am. It’s a way to keep in touch with my friends from around the world. ● ● ● Seeing Minjee succeed helped me transition to pro golf, even though we go about the game complete- ly differently. She plays in a straight line, but I play in a crooked line and am always scrambling. I’m trying to be more like her in my practice, spending long, focused hours on the range. In 2023, I earned special temporary PGA Tour status, finished T-5 at the US Open and officially got my card for 2024. ● ● ● I’m a rookie, but I’ve already picked up a following on social media. I like to make golf fun and am trying to give it a better image on Instagram and TikTok. Not everyone thinks highly of social media, but I grew up with it, so it feels natural to me. I work with a team that films my life inside the ropes and edits videos of me doing everything from messing around in pro-ams to signing autographs. The response has been great. ● ● ● There is this phrase, Let him cook, which basically means, “Let him do his thing,” that people started posting about me after I finished T-6 at the 2023 Players. It took off, and the next thing I knew, there were huge groups in the galleries wearing chef hats and cheering for me. I get en- ergy from that stuff, so I embrace it. I like being in the spotlight and trying to make things go viral. The fans love it, too. ● ● ● I’ve known since I was a teenager that I was going to be pretty good at golf – I just didn’t know when I would get there. I feel like I’m very close. When players get really good, they stop trying to make huge changes to get better. They know their swings, and they are working on the same things over and over. Once you get to that place, you start to get great results. My first few years as a pro were about getting to this level of comfort. Now I’m really going to start cooking out there.
the tour wasn’t always as clear By Min Woo Lee with Keely Levins
M y mom was a golf professional and started teaching at the local range when my older sister, Minjee, was born. Minjee and I grew up following Mom around at the range. My dad started playing golf when he met my mom and became a plus-handicap. I didn’t love golf as a kid, but since we’re a golfing family, it’s always been a part of my life. Minjee has won mul- tiple major championships, and it was always clear growing up that she was going to be great. It took me longer to fall in love with golf.
I was a bit of a rascal as a kid. I had a lot of energy, and it was hard to focus on golf. I gravitated towards sports with more action. I liked playing basketball, and I was a competitive swimmer, too. I don’t remember any specific golf les- sons my parents taught me. It’s hard to listen to your parents when you’re young, but they did keep me around golf enough to help me get pretty good – in spite of myself. ● ● ●
do putting drills for hours; I would get bored and start messing around, putting balls in impossible places, trying to get up and down, and seeing if I could get a reaction from other people. ● ● ● When I was 17, I won the US Junior Amateur. My sister and I are the only sibling duo to have both won it. When I was 19, I wanted to turn pro, but my parents, coach and agent convinced me
to stay an amateur. They told me I wasn’t emotion- ally mature enough. They were right. I spent another year playing in Australia, where I matured by watch- ing the older pros. When
Looking back, I’m glad golf didn’t click for me right away. I credit my strong chipping and putting to having good hand-eye coordination,
MIN WOO LEE PGA TOUR AGE 25 LIVES PERTH, AUSTRALIA
you’re young, a bogey feels like the end of the world. The pros aren’t like that. I played alongside guys who made mis- takes and then kept bouncing back. I tried to copy those composed demean- ours I saw around me, and I got better. ● ● ● I turned pro when I was 20 and played events on the DP World Tour and the Korean Tour, as well as in Australia. In 2021, I broke through and won the Scottish Open, one of the bigger events on the DP World Tour. Suddenly I knew for certain that I could play against the best players in the world. That win got me into the Open Championship
which I was able to develop by playing other sports. As I got older, I realised I could hit it further than just about any- body, and that was fun. When I was 15, I was selected to represent my state in a junior tournament in Australia. I loved the social aspect of it; that’s what really made me start to enjoy golf. ● ● ● I started playing and practising more, even though I still hate all the boring stuff! My sister, who is now a US Women’s Open champion, has always been good about hitting hun- dreds of balls at the range. I would hit like 30 and get tired of it. She would
PHOTOGRAPH BY DOM FURORE
8 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JUNE 2024
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