Min Woo Lee might be tired and up against a star-studded field at the Australian PGA Championship, but after signing off on his DP World Tour season with a string of hot finishes the Perth native is ready to take on the big boys.
Lee, the younger brother of LPGA superstar Minjee Lee, arrived in Brisbane on Tuesday morning fresh off the plane from Dubai, where he finished a solid T12 at the DP World Tour finale. That result came after two consecutive third place finishes while the European Tour was in Spain and a tie for eighth when the Old World circuit travelled to South Africa for the Nedbank Golf Challenge earlier this month.
Now he’s back on home soil, the 24-year-old is one of several big names in the field for the Australian PGA at Royal Queensland. World No.3 and Open Championship winner Cameron Smith, Adam Scott, Ryan Fox, Marc Leishman and Lucas Herbert are just some of the stars hoping to win the PGA this week.
Lee welcomes the stiff competition. In fact, he wants to play with him and go toe-to-toe.
“I’m excited to be here,” Lee said Tuesday. “Obviously the crowd was amazing (when the 2022 Australian PGA was held at Royal Queensland in February this year) and I think it’s going to be even better this (time). It will be nice to get drawn with the big boys. I’m not really worrying about too much of the crowd; I’m just excited to play in Australia again.”
Lee, a two-time winner on the European Tour, says the lessons learned from two solid results at the majors this year will fuel his Australian PGA campaign. He made the cut on the number and tied 14th at the Masters before a top-25 result at the Open at St Andrews, won by countryman Smith.
“I just really enjoyed my time at the majors,” Lee said. “Obviously the Masters is just a golfer’s dream. Even as a spectator, my parents, they loved it. It was just one of those weeks that it was kind of surreal and you kind of want to get back there. Hopefully I can take what happened there to here (Royal Queensland); this kind of feels like a major crowd. The beginning of the year, with so many people watching, so hopefully we can do that again and emulate it.”
For now, Lee is going to take a light practice schedule ahead of Thursday’s first round – and get some sleep. He boarded the plane from Dubai at 2am local time and didn’t get into Brisbane until 10.30am. Lee joked he had less than 24 hours for an off season between the DP World Tour Championship ending and the PGA Tour of Australasia’s summer of golf starting.
“(Not even )24 hours) and I’m back on,” Lee said. “It was kind of funny because all the DP World people, my friends were all done for the year and having a few drinks and I was like no, I’ve got to wait a couple of weeks to rewind and chill out. So, I’m looking forward to the break, but I mean, it’s a new start and hopefully the next two events (including next week’s Australian Open) are good.”
