Picture this: a tour player whose ball speeds with the driver regularly surpass 190 miles per hour, who boasts an elite short game and gains almost a stroke on the field in putting against the world’s best golfers. Then, take his Achilles heel – approach play – and work on it rigorously during the offseason. Sounds like a scary combination, right? Although Min Woo Lee – Australia’s newest and unlikeliest celebrity chef – might call it a recipe.
Whichever way you slice it, the recipe is a savage mix for a 25-year-old golfer who has already won four times around the world and contended in majors and other big events.
“Over the past year, my driving has been unreal and chipping and putting has been unbelievable too,” Lee tells Australian Golf Digest. “If I can just match it up with my iron play, it could be amazing.”
The boffins in the data trucks at PGA Tour HQ would agree; there’s enormous potential to be harnessed. Lee’s driving is elite, yet raw. He’s powerful but could be more accurate. With a driving distance of 289 metres (316 yards), Lee ranked seventh – behind Rory McIlroy, two other Ryder Cup European stars, as well as three American heavy hitters.
Around the greens, fans will know Lee’s short game is borderline sorcery, most recently watching him hole out a 40-metre pitch for eagle during the final round of his Australian PGA Championship victory. Statistically, Lee’s PGA Tour scrambling from inside 20 yards was 72.41 percent and that increased to 93.94 percent from inside 10 yards. On the greens, he gained 0.772 strokes per round while competing against the world’s best putters.
Lee’s iron play, though, was the fly in the ointment. He lost 0.595 strokes to the field in approach play on the PGA Tour, a number that ranked outside the top 185. Scottie Scheffler was No.1, gaining 1.194 strokes with his irons. Lee also hit 61.49 percent of greens in regulation, which, again, would not have ranked in the top 185. Yet he still managed four top-10 finishes from 14 events on the PGA Tour alone, including a T-6 at the Players Championship in March, where he played in the final group with Scheffler and even took the lead after 57 holes at TPC Sawgrass, a T-5 at the US Open at Los Angeles Country Club and two more top 10s at the Travelers Championship and Zozo Championship in Japan.
“I think a contributor to my iron play [being below average] is that when I miss greens, I have so much trust in my chipping and putting that I go for more flags than usual. It’s a good and bad thing, I guess. I just need to get to PGA Tour average or better on the approach play and I’ll be golden.”
You might be wondering what’s causing Lee’s iron struggles. And how, exactly, he will fix them. Lee says his long-time coach, Ritchie Smith, has already pinpointed the answer. Lee jumps off the ground at impact when his legs give in to the speed of his upper body. It’s powerful, but not consistent enough to contend regularly.
“My upper body is really good, but my lower body is a bit lacking on the stability side of it,” Lee says. “So, we’re trying to be a bit more grounded with my left foot. We’re trying to get more over to my left side when I’m hitting my irons. If you look at Scottie Scheffler, he gets so far to his left that his right foot slides with his body. I’m not trying to do that, but I’m trying to get more weight in my left because I jump off my left foot at impact. If you get to your left side, your hands can become very stable at impact, which leads to consistency. I’m trying to use the bigger muscles in the body that I’ve grown in the gym over the past few years. I’ve worked on this left shift with Ritchie before, and I’ve played well with that swing thought. But when it’s my third or fourth week out on tour in a row, it’s easy to forget to do it.
“Speed and hitting it long are some of my best assets, but there comes a point [where] it only gets you so far. The proof is in the pudding; a lot of the best ball-strikers move into that left side with the legs and hips. These past few weeks in the offseason, I’ve been seeing a lot more centre strikes with my irons. It’s already showing in training, which is really cool. The feel is almost clubbing up and hitting it a bit softer instead of going a club less and smoking it. It’s more controlled.”
The location where Lee will be putting in the required hours on the range for that swing tweak is changing, too. Now a fully fledged member of the PGA Tour for the 2024 season, having earned enough non-member points last year, Lee has decided to base himself in Las Vegas “even though I won’t be there that much with a heavy schedule”.
Vegas has become known as the “Jupiter of the West”, a reference to the tour-pro hotspot of Jupiter, Florida – home to Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka and many other stars. Tour pros also gravitate to Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as Dallas, Texas, and the Florida hubs of Orlando and Jacksonville.
Lee has developed friendships with two-time major winner, Collin Morikawa, as well as David Lipsky and Kurt Kitayama, who are West Coast natives that now call Nevada home. In addition to year-round sun, no state income taxes and a lack of humidity that wreaks havoc in Florida, Vegas also has two TPC network courses – TPC Las Vegas and TPC Summerlin. There, PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour pros receive a free membership.
“Every time I go to Vegas to stay and practise, I play well in the tournaments immediately after,” Lee says. “There’s a great balance between working hard with Kurt, Collin and David, because they’re all striving to be their best, and the food and entertainment side of things. In Vegas, that scene is unbelievable; it’s like the opposite of [the relatively quiet city of] Perth,” he laughs. “Vegas is exciting, but it’s also as fun as you want to make it, or as chill as you want. From a golf perspective, Collin, Kurt and David are really motivated on the range and on the course. It’s cool to have PGA pros there and learn from them.”
From Vegas, Lee will launch his 2024 PGA Tour campaign looking to break through the maiden victory barrier in the US. His first event will be the American Express tournament in mid-January in the California desert. After that, it will be a combination of majors, regular PGA Tour events and the $US25 million signature tournaments he can play his way into.
Lee’s 2024 Masters invitation arrived in the post in late December from Augusta National. Being the social media-savvy youngster he is, Lee hung the invitation on his Christmas tree as a decoration and posted to his Instagram account. His excitement to return to the April major is obvious, having carded a record-equalling front nine score of 30 on his debut in 2022 en route to a T-14 finish. He missed the cut last year but has earmarked the Masters as the tournament he’s most looking forward to in 2024.
“The Masters is… put it this way: I missed the cut last year, but I still had one of the best times of my life,” he says. “It’s such an unreal place. I love the golf course and the feel of everything and hopefully that never really goes away. I’m excited to go back there.”
Lee is also eyeing the US Open at Pinehurst. The sandy, pine tree-laden terrain of North Carolina’s Pinehurst area is not unlike the various sandbelt regions of Australian golf. Lee’s older sister, Minjee, won the 2022 US Women’s Open at nearby Pine Needles, so the location has sentimental inspiration. Lee, a former winner of a USGA event – the 2014 US Junior Amateur – is developing a fondness for US Open tests, which is dubbed golf’s most brutal examination. He adores major championships for the premium those four events place on avoiding mistakes. The US Open is the leader in that regard. He’ll also arrive at Pinehurst in June with the confidence of shooting a final-round 67 to earn a maiden top five at the majors during last year’s US Open, as well as having won twice (Australian PGA and the Macao Open) in 2023.
“I was very close to winning more tournaments last year, and I was in contention a lot over the past six months,” Lee says. “I got a taste of it, and I really want to get back to that level. Hopefully, I can win a couple more this year. I’m really excited for the majors. The majors are a big deal for me and earning that top five at the US Open was one of the highlights of my career so far.
“The three tournament I’m most looking forward to are the Masters, then the US Open, given it’s at Pinehurst, and also the Travelers Championship. I finished T-9 there last year and it was a great course (TPC River Highlands) up there in Connecticut and a great event.”
META VERSE
It’s difficult to determine whether Lee’s star rose more on the course or away from the links. His following grew significantly on social media this past year while he garnered more attention from mainstream media, golf publications and online in general. ABC’s flagship series “Australian Story” will release an episode this month focusing on Lee and older sister Minjee, the superstar who captured her ninth and 10th LPGA titles in 2023. It’s only the second episode to focus on a golfer(s), after Greg Norman, in the documentary-style program’s 27-year history.
Astonishingly, Lee also knocked off Cameron Smith from the mantle of most Googled golfer in Australia in 2023. Smith, the mullet-wearing, knockabout winner of the 150th Open Championship at St Andrews, began 2023 with the attention of the Australian sporting public eager to see if he could produce an encore to a sensational breakout season. But Lee stole the show, becoming the most Googled golfer in Australia for the year overall. Zoom in on individual months, and Lee topped the golf searches for March, October, November and December. He also ranked in the top five in four additional months. That’s an index that includes every star across the men’s and women’s games, from Smith to Jon Rahm, Lexi Thompson, Minjee, Lydia Ko and Tiger Woods.
Lee’s rise began with his self-deprecating and light-hearted antics during the Players Championship, when after beginning the tournament with a severe cramp that required treatment on course, he took the lead early in the final round playing in the final group with Scheffler but capitulated after the third hole at TPC Sawgrass. When he made a long-awaited birdie on the famous par-3 17th, he revved up the crowd and even received a shoutout from popular US sports networks like Barstool.
Lee also took off on social media, adopting the catchphrase “Let him cook” and applying it to almost all his posts for much of the year. His “hype videos” released on the eve of each tournament were a hit, and by the time he arrived in Australia in November, there were “Let him cook” T-shirts in the galleries at the Australian PGA and Open. When he won the Australian PGA, his third DP World Tour victory, Lee celebrated by wearing a white chef’s hat and performing Viking claps on the “party hole” par-3 17th at Royal Queensland. He led the Australian Open through three rounds a week later and truly became an Australian household sporting name.
Posts from Australian Golf Digest’s social media accounts featuring Lee generated replies like, “Yes, chef!” The whole persona might be a bit of a gimmick, but Lee both knows that and has fun with it. He laughs when asked whether he’s going to go bigger on the course or online in 2024.
“I’m going to say both,” says Lee, who has more than 700,000 followers across TikTok, X (Twitter) and Instagram. “Social media is great, and you can talk all you want, but you have to back it up, which I did last year. That’s why I think [my number of followers has] grown so much. I’ll be making sure I can back it up again this year. It’s really fun and really cool. I want to be the type of person who grows the game in a fun, light-hearted way to people who may not necessarily be hardcore golfers but have seen my social media content. So many people have come up to me, even parents, saying their children are back into golf or getting into golf because they love my whacky social media videos. That’s a massive reward for me. I can do that by just playing good golf and posting on social media.”
It begs the question, what are the origins of “Let him cook” and why did he apply it to his golf content on social media? A quick search indicates it’s a video gaming term, which makes sense given Lee is an avid gamer who loves “Call of Duty”. It’s a globally successful, first-person-shooter game owned by Microsoft and published by Activision. Users affectionately refer to it as “COD”.
“‘Let him cook’ is usually said when you’re playing COD in a five-vs-five-person game and one person is left. If someone’s in the background telling him what to do, someone else says, ‘No, just let him cook. Let him do his thing.’”
Perhaps that explains why fans gave the world No.33 some leeway this year when he registered nine top-10s across the DP World, PGA and Asian tours, including a T-2 in Abu Dhabi, but converted only two of them into victories. His career was cooking, and we just have to be patient.
Will he win a major? Will he contend at the Masters on the back of working hard on his iron play, which Augusta National – the world’s best second-shot golf course – will certainly examine? Maybe. Can he win the Masters, and create a year’s worth of hilarious speculation about what Lee might serve at the 2025 Masters Champions Dinner?
We can dream.
Getty images: Mark Metcalfe; PATRICK HAMILTON
