Porthcawl, Wales | If Minjee Lee would win this week at Royal Porthcawl to win, say, 7 o’clock on Sunday evening, it would be 2 hours the next morning in the parental home in Perth on the west coast of Australia. News about her success would miss the morning papers and the next day the coverage would arrest less.
One way it was not surprising to learn how, in 2019, The age Van Melbourne had described Minjee as ‘the invisible champion of Australia’, and that although she had already won five events during the LPGA tour. ((The ageThe observation has always touched me as someone to explain why Australians and New Zealanders – I am thinking of Lydia Ko and Ryan Fox here to add a few to Lee – are rarely dragged through their success.)
Just like her younger brother, Min Woo, a winner on the PGA Tour, Minjee spent half of her life traveling with the golf ball. What is more, on those occasions when her parents, Soonam and Clara, from Perth fly to see their offspring, the chances are that they can see themselves at Min Woo in a week when Minjee wins in another state.
As Minjee sees it so wise, she and minus woo are blessed in that America, the home of the PGA and LPGA tours, a golf country is not only helping volunteers from tournament by managing the crowds and working on the scoreboards, but by offering hospitality to visiting players.
Although the English Trish Johnson, the Sky commentator who has three LPGA titles to her name, undoubtedly organizes friends in her house in Royal Porthcawl this week, there are few of such hospitality openings for players on the European Tour Ladies. How the Let – girls would love if they were there – and how their parents would like it.
Minjee and Min Woo met with the first family she had to stay and were good enough to take care of them as long as desired. Nowadays, although the couple has been successful enough during their respective tours to own a house individually, they remain the best friends with those original hosts.
Initially it had meant a lot that they were able to save money, but over the years such regulations have changed more to more than that, especially to Minjee. She has five or six other families to whom she can regularly return – and it is because of the company.
“There are times when you don’t want to stay in a hotel and want to be alone,” she said at Dundonald Links during the Women’s Scottish Open last week. “I would like to go back to the old friends I made on the way. You have meals together and, as often as not, the hosts will come to support you when you play. It is so reassuring – as if you have a family regularly.
“The only thing I had to do was roll out of bed, walk the two or three minutes to the track and return to my ‘home’ after the 18 holes.” – Minjee Lee
When she won this year’s KPMG PGA championship, her third major, her father was back to Perth, but her mother happened to be in the right place at the right time to witness her victory at PGA Frisco. In the meantime, the people who had organized her were when they first visited Dallas for an LPGA stop to watch. “It was so good to see so many familiar faces,” said Minjee. “That happens a lot when I play in Australia, but not so much here. I think it’s great if so.”
Heaven knows how many American friends have made minjee on the way – good friends who remain friends. Usually, when she has made arrangements to go back to one of the families, she will be armed with bottles of wine or flowers. And if the hosts and their friends ever want a collection of signatures of players, she is always happy to oblige.
But if there is a location where she gets a different version of a “homely” feeling, the Dundonald are left. Take into account all the thousands and thousands of kilometers that she has to travel during the course of a year, the huts of the clubhouse on that Scottish location calls for nothing more than a three -minute walk to the track: “All I had to do was roll out out of bed, walk the two or three minutes to the course and return to my ‘home’ after the 18 holes.”
Although minjee and min woo were close enough to meet up for dinner when Min Woo won his first PGA Tour title – the Texas Children’s Houston open this year – there was again that there was a wonderfully unexpected link between the two.
It happened on a day when Min Woo ended so well in the fourth of what was only his second event as a professional, the Saudi international 2019.
A random number of oil workers and others hurried to get his signature and he in turn published one signed ball after the other.
In the realization that I would see minje the next week, I asked him to give me one of those signed balls, so that I could hand it over to her by a surprise. “I doubt she wants it,” he said, shy, while he signed one for her.
Minjee took a break of some practice when I caught up with her.
“I have a gift for you,” I said.
“Good,” she said excitedly.
So far what Min Woo had said about how she wouldn’t care. She checked the signature and smiled the pride of a smile.
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