PORTHCAWL, WALES | If Minjee Lee were to win this week’s AIG Women’s Open at Royal Porthcawl at, say, 7 o’clock on Sunday night, it would be 2 o’clock the following morning at the family home in Perth on Australia’s west coast. News of her success would miss the morning papers and, by the following day, the coverage would be altogether less arresting.
One way and another, it was hardly surprising to learn how, in 2019, The Age of Melbourne had described Minjee as “the Invisible Champion of Australia,” and that though she had already won five events on the LPGA Tour. (The Age’s observation has always struck me as one to explain why Australians and New Zealanders – I’m thinking here of Lydia Ko and Ryan Fox to add a couple to Lee – seldom get carried away with their success.)
Like her younger brother, Min Woo, a winner on the PGA Tour, Minjee has spent half her life traveling the golfing globe. What is more, on those occasions when her parents, Soonam and Clara, fly over from Perth to see their offspring, the chances are that they can find themselves watching Min Woo in a week when Minjee is winning in a different state.
As Minjee sees it so sensibly, she and Min Woo have been blessed beyond belief in that America, home of the PGA and LPGA tours, is a golfing land where tournament volunteers help not only by managing the crowds and working on the scoreboards, but by offering hospitality to visiting players.
Though England’s Trish Johnson, the Sky commentator who has three LPGA titles to her name, is no doubt hosting friends in her house at Royal Porthcawl this week, there are few such hospitality openings for players on the Ladies European Tour. How the LET girls would love it if there were – and how their parents would love it too.
Minjee and Min Woo struck lucky with the first family who had them to stay and were good enough to take them under their wing for as long as was wanted. Today, though the pair have been successful enough on their respective tours to own a house apiece, they remain the best of friends with those original hosts.
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