Why Min Woo Lee believes the melting pot of cultures on the International team has the side poised for an upset victory over the US team at this month’s Presidents Cup.
Min Woo Lee was 14 years of age when he discovered that socialising and meeting new people from different cultures was the spice of life. Of all places, Lee had the epiphany in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, at the 2013 Srixon International Junior Classic at Maitland Golf Club.
Harrison Endycott won the event, as Lee tied for 17th. Results mattered little; meeting fellow junior golfers from all over Australia, as well as New Zealand, Japan, Canada and South Africa helped Lee fall in love with golf. Until that time, Lee knew he had prodigious talent but lacked a true passion for the game.
“It was a big junior tournament,” Lee told a DP World Tour podcast recently of the long-standing Jack Newton Junior Golf event. “I guess worldwide because all the countries would come over and that’s kind of why I started to love golf – meeting new people and meeting different cultures and different countries. I just loved it.”
Almost 13 years later, and now an Olympian after the 2024 Games in Paris, Lee will get another chance to mingle with players from across the globe in a meaningful pursuit – coming together under one flag and trying to become just the second victorious International team in the 32-year history of the Presidents Cup. The 1998 team at Royal Melbourne was the only other win.
Lee sat down with Australian Golf Digest in the weeks after the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale to discuss his upcoming second appearance for the International team. From September 24-27, the biennial contest heads to the outer suburbs of Chicago where Medinah Country Club will host the 16th Presidents Cup.
Your correspondent asked Lee about the concept of golfers from around the world, with different cultures, languages and food, coming together under the International team banner and attempting to thwart a team of American superstars. World No.1 Scottie Scheffler and US Open champion Wyndham Clark will be among the multiple major winners leading the US team. When asked about how that 2013 anecdote relates to the Presidents Cup, Lee said the International team’s cross-continental spirit was arguably the greatest hallmark of the Cup’s potential.
“Some of us are really good friends, but I think we’re really close in that sense that most of us are from different countries,” Lee says from his home base in Las Vegas. “I have a great time because I can speak Korean with the Korean guys and they can’t speak as much English. There are Australians [and other nationalities] and it’s just very nice to have [everyone] being together from different countries. We get to laugh and hang out and it’s just nice.”
Competitively, the 2024 Presidents Cup in Canada left a deeper impression on Lee than simply earning his International team debut. The side’s crushing 18.5 to 11.5 defeat to the US at Royal Montreal Golf Club stung, but the week offered the West Australian something valuable: a glimpse into the standards, preparation and intensity of the world’s best players operating together. As fellow Australian Geoff Ogilvy prepares to captain the 12-man International team at Medinah, Lee believes the lessons learned in Canada, coupled with a far stronger team – led by newly minted Open champion Ryan Fox – will give the underdogs a genuine level of optimism.
“We didn’t get the win [in 2024], but it was the most fun I had on the golf course – being with all the boys and [seeing] how they go about their business,” Lee recalls.
Another cornerstone of the Presidents Cup is helping golfers springboard to greater heights after withstanding the pressure of delivering for a team on the world stage. Australia’s only Masters champion at Augusta National, Adam Scott, has often spoken about how the Cup helped kickstart, and revive, his career after difficult periods. His debut in South Africa in 2003 paved the way for his 2004 Players Championship victory at TPC Sawgrass. Six years later, being picked as a wildcard by captain Greg Norman in 2009 – despite the worst year of his career on the PGA Tour – inspired a belief in Scott that helped end his slump. Scott started contending in majors and three-and-a half years later, he’d won the 2013 Masters.
Lee believes his own maiden appearance in Canada in 2024 ultimately accelerated his development. Five months after losing a four-ball match on the first day when paired with Scott, and halving his Sunday singles match with Clark, Lee captured the 2025 Houston Open, his first PGA Tour victory. He began to feel he belonged among golf’s elite. Now, Lee is the world No.27 and comfortable in the game’s upper echelon.
“I think you put yourself in pressure situations and obviously matchplay is not something that we do a lot, especially against a good player,” Lee says. “So, I think it’s somewhat like a major. It’s something you really want to play well in. I think it’s a stage where you can play well and [it acts as] a confidence booster or it can bring you down, which you don’t want. You can go in there thinking, Hey, let’s show off and play some good golf. You can’t back down, especially [given the upcoming edition at Medinah] is an away game. I think a lot of guys thrive off that.”
If there is one player seemingly created in a lab for the cut-throat format of matchplay and the Presidents Cup stage, it is Lee. You might recall he became the first Australian to win the US Junior Amateur, in 2016, requiring a 36-hole matchplay final. Lee waited out a 47-minute weather delay during the match and eventually drained the winning birdie putt to secure a 2&1 victory at The Honors Course in Tennessee.
A decade later, and now a winner across the PGA and DP World tours, Lee has maintained an aggressive style and an infectious personality that have already made him a crowd favourite. A platform that pits a rest-of-the-world International team against a star-studded American side appears perfectly suited to a golfer who relishes performing in the spotlight, especially with the “Let him cook” and “Dr Chipinski” catchphrases that fans can’t get enough of.
Lee just needs more opportunities to show his credentials in the Presidents Cup, given how 2024 Internationals captain Mike Weir bizarrely sat the Australian for the entire Friday and Saturday, meaning he missed four sessions.
“I don’t shy away from any of that stuff and I love being in the spotlight and playing good golf,” Lee says. “Obviously sometimes my results don’t show that. But when I’m out there, I really want to do well.”
A PIVOTAL SHIFT
Lee says the biggest takeaway from the locker room at Royal Montreal was the bonds forged among the International team. Despite falling 5-0 behind after the opening session, there was no sense of surrender. Veterans, rookies, players and caddies worked equally hard to keep spirits high, believing momentum could still shift.
“The whole week, being around the boys, [seeing] how they go about their business [was a learning experience],” Lee recalls. “I didn’t play many [matches], so it was a bit different. I got to see what happened inside the ropes and support our boys. Even though we were down, we still couldn’t let that [get us] down. We were a team, so we stayed in high spirits even when we were 5-0 down after the first session. We were pretty upset about the result because some of them were pretty close matches, but something that people don’t know was that we were singing and we were upbeat about it.”
Since that week in Canada, much has changed in Lee’s life. His breakthrough PGA Tour victory at Memorial Park confirmed his place among the game’s rising stars, but equally significant has been finally establishing a permanent base in Las Vegas. Having previously commuted in blocks of time from Perth, Lee has built a routine that combines practice at The Summit Club in Las Vegas, close friendships and the kind of stability that can be difficult to find during the early years of a star’s career.
“It’s nice to go back to a place where you really love to be,” Lee says. “Having a nice house, a [new] puppy and a good bed. I love coming back home, practising where I am, have my PC where I can play games. I’m excited to get off the course and go back home, which earlier on my career on the PGA Tour and even Europe, obviously the travel was so far playing in America. [Now] it’s just a lot easier.”
At The Summit Club, a private course nestled between Red Rock Canyon National Park and the Las Vegas Strip, 28-year-old Lee stays sharp with regular money matches against two-time major champion Collin Morikawa and PGA Tour winners Maverick McNealy and Kurt Kitayama.
“I’ve got a good bunch of friends around me; Kurt, Collin and Mav,” Lee says. “I think that just keeps us all competitive. We’re all doing really well. I just surround myself with players that want to keep getting better and I think that’s the difference between guys that are just out on tour and these guys who are top-30 in the world. They still want to beat each other and beat me. I think that just shows how competitive it is and it’s good to have friends like that.
“It’s very hard to beat [Morikawa], that’s for sure. I get him once in a while. You can see why his results – even though he’s hurt and he’s not at 100 percent, it’s pretty cool to see how good his results are [on the PGA Tour].”
Those games regularly produce eye-wateringly low scores. On a good day, breaking 65 is almost expected, and course records rarely last long when Morikawa, Kitayama, Taylor Montgomery and Lee are trading birdies.
“At Summit, we can get it going,” Lee says. “Depending on the conditions and the pin positions, I mean, we can be shooting five to 10-under for 18 holes. Ten-under is rare, but we’ll comfortably probably shoot five or six-under during a round. I think we’ve all had a chance to break the course record there. Taylor Montgomery has a course record there now.”
Lee even briefly held Summit Club’s low mark. “I had it for about a couple months and then Collin beat me; I think I shot 61 and then he shot 60 and Taylor might’ve shot 59, something like that. Summit Club can be hard, but usually it’s pretty forgettable if you drive it well.”
Despite living in one of the entertainment capitals of the world, Lee eschews the famous casinos and nightlife in Las Vegas. Most evenings are deliberately quiet, spent at home or sharing dinner with friends before returning to the routine that has underpinned the most consistent golf of his career. Lee has registered four top-10 results on the PGA Tour this year including a runner-up at the Genesis Scottish Open in mid-July.
“Most of [my downtime] is at home; that’s where I switch off,” Lee says. “But if friends are [in town], we can go to The Strip and have some good food. We love Yellowtail, a Japanese restaurant, and Carbone. There’s some good off-The-Strip places too, but home cooking and being at home is probably the biggest [way of recharging].”
Lee’s most significant off-course adjustment has been becoming a dog owner with girlfriend Gracie Drennan. “Aussie”, a Bernedoodle, has unexpectedly reshaped Lee’s daily life, replacing lazy mornings with walks, routine and a sense of responsibility beyond golf.
“I think it’s somewhat like having a baby – not much sleep, constantly knowing where they are, toilet training, stuff like that,” Lee says. “Instead of waking up, hanging out on your phone and waiting for the day to start, he’s already up and running. Being a Bernedoodle-poodle mix, he’s very energetic and needs to go for a walk. He gets me outside and just a bit more present, which is great.”
Which is why, for his second crack at the Presidents Cup, Lee feels grounded, on and off the course. Few know Lee’s potential better than 2006 US Open winner Ogilvy, and it would surprise no-one to see Lee become the standout star of the 2026 edition. Lee, though, points to a well-rounded International team.
“We haven’t won [since 1998 at Royal Melbourne], but you still have faith going in there,” Lee says. “If we have our best golf, with our players this year, I think we can do some damage.”
With the top six qualifiers on the International team set to feature Lee, Fox, Si Woo Kim, Hideki Matsuyama, Tom Kim and Corey Conners, as well as Scott and possibly Jason Day, an upset victory has never looked more likely.
Photographs by getty images/ross parker, andrew redington, keyur Khamar
