Tag: Alison Lee

Watch: Caddies pull shirts off in fairway after Alison Lee holes out at Solheim Cup

Things really came to a boil early when American Alison Lee holed out.

Emotions are running hot at the 2024 Solheim Cup, where the United States cruised out to a 6-2 lead after the opening day of play, and maintained that edge after splitting foursomes on Saturday morning.

But things really came to a boil early in the afternoon session when American Alison Lee holed out from the second fairway in her match. Lee and Megan Khang were taking on the European duo of Anna Nordqvist and Madelene Sagstrom.

After Lee dunked her shot from 86 yards away, the caddies went wild, inciting the crowd by pulling off their shirts and hugging while the fans cheered.

The two sides tied at last year’s Solheim Cup, leading to Team Europe retaining the cup. The U.S. leads the all-time series 10-7-1.

Leona Maguire eagles final hole to capture London Aramco event at Centurion Club

This was no ordinary finish. 

Leona Maguire got off to a fast start at this week’s Ladies European Tour’s Aramco Team Series London event, and she needed a strong finish to close out a victory at the Centurion Club.

Maguire shot a 66 in the opening round and then slid home with rounds of 72 on Thursday and 73 on Friday to capture the individual title at the event, finishing the 54-hole tournament at 8 under. Maria Hernandez was a stroke behind Maguire and the trio of Alison Lee, Lauren Walsh and Georgia Hall tied for third at 6 under.

But this was no ordinary finish.

Walsh, who hails from Ireland but played collegiately at Wake Forest, shot a 65 to take the lead for a stretch, then Hernandez made birdie on the par-5 18th hole to take the lead at 7 under.

Sitting at 6 under at the time, Maguire made the shot of the tournament, knocking her hybrid onto the fringe just left of the hole and watching as the ball rolled up onto the green, giving her an opportunity to drop a putt for the victory.

With the pressure on, Maguire hit the putt to edge Hernandez, the win marking her first on the LET to go with a pair of victories on the LPGA. Her last win came more than a year ago at the 2023 Meijer LPGA Classic.

LPGA: Alison Lee rebounds with 66 after chat with hype man, mentor Fred Couples

“My boyfriend can go on and on and tell me how great I am … (but) I’m like, you’re supposed to say that.”

Alison Lee felt like she’d been put on ice after finishing the 2023 LPGA season with three consecutive runner-up showings. For Lee, it was a shame that the season had to end at all.

But then her offseason got even longer after a nasty dog bite left her hospitalized and on the sidelines for two extra weeks. She felt rushed heading to her first start to the season in Singapore and left shaken by the poor start.

“You know, my biggest fear, too, is losing it, right?” said Lee. “Like I had such a great end of the year last year. Golf is such an unpredictable game. Anything can happen. I can have a really good stretch of events and then the next week you can play terribly.

“That’s what your mind always goes to even though you shouldn’t.”

Lee’s mind went there after a T-51 at the HSBC Women’s World Championship that included rounds of 77 and 79. But the former UCLA star dug deep to keep herself from getting too down. She saw her putting coach and her swing coach. A call from hype man Fred Couples helped, too.

2024 HSBC Women's World Championship
Alison Lee plays her shot from the second tee during the first round of the 2024 HSBC Women’s World Championship at Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore. (Photo: Yong Teck Lim/Getty Images)

“My boyfriend can go on and on and tell me how great I am,” said Lee. “Doesn’t mean anything because I’m like, you’re supposed to say that.

“When you have someone like him [Couples] who’s a legend who says all these nice things – he doesn’t have to say any of that – for him to put some time aside and give me a little bit of confidence and tell me things that sometimes I don’t believe myself is a lot. It means a lot to me.”

At the newly renamed Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship, Lee got some confidence back after an opening 5-under 66 at Palos Verdes Golf Club in California put her two strokes back of Canada’s Maude-Aimee Leblanc.

There’s a lot on the line for the 20th-ranked Lee as she looks to qualify for the Summer Olympics in Paris and make another U.S. Solheim Cup team.

“Yeah, feels good,” said Lee. “I had a lot of nerves coming into this week for sure.”

Nasty dog bite slows LPGA star Alison Lee, who has been the hottest player in golf

“He’s a very sweet dog,” Lee insisted. “He just gets very territorial.”

Alison Lee stayed off the black runs on a recent ski trip to Japan in an effort to avoid anything catastrophic. She couldn’t have imagined that her boyfriend’s rescue dog, a black Pomeranian aptly named Bear, would be what sent her to the hospital.

Bear, a rescue dog who only has a handful of teeth, managed to clamp down on Lee’s left hand in late January, resulting in a number of open wounds. Twenty-four hours after the incident, Lee woke up to find that her entire arm had turned red. She went to the emergency room and was diagnosed with lymphangitis. Doctors had to cut open her hand in two places to get rid of the infection.

She stayed in the hospital for two nights and withdrew from next week’s Aramco Saudi Ladies International as well as the Honda LPGA Thailand. Lee, who won on Saudi’s Riyadh Golf Club last fall, will make her first LPGA start Feb. 29-March 3 at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore.

“He’s a very sweet dog,” Lee insisted. “He just gets very territorial.”

The rescue dog of her boyfriend bit Alison Lee and knocked the player out of commission for a bit. (Photo: Alison Lee)

The Los Angeles native was the hottest player in the world at the end of 2023, winning on the LET in Saudi Arabia and finishing runner-up in her last three LPGA starts. Though admittedly burnt out at the end of the year, Lee only wished she’d had a couple more chances to try and capitalize on the momentum.

When it comes to star power, few on tour can match Lee’s potential.

“There’s an elegance about everything she does,” said Chris Mayson, the swing coach who brought Lee out of a years-long slump with the driver yips.

“It’s a little bit like watching Rory (McIlroy) play the game. There’s a rhythm to it that just makes it easy on the eye.”

One of the most approachable players on tour, Lee’s openness with the media makes it easy for fans to take an interest. The problem, of course, is that Lee hasn’t yet built a professional resume strong enough to take advantage of that star potential.

More to the point: She hasn’t won on the LPGA.

“She has that ability to capture the audience,” said UCLA head coach Alicia Um Holmes of a Bruin who won the Annika Award, given to the nation’s top player, as a freshman.

A six-time first-team All-American on the AJGA, Lee was a powerhouse amateur who won LPGA Q-School in 2014. As a rookie, she played her way onto the Solheim Cup team – like Paula Creamer and Rose Zhang – but watched the early success plummet in short order.

Lee had experienced the driver yips in the past, to the point she worried that UCLA might pull her scholarship. But she’d always found a way to claw herself back in a few short months.

By 2018, Lee had dipped to 155th on the LPGA money list. By the time she arrived on Mayson’s practice tee, she was desperate.

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Mayson immediately provided a sense of calm.

 “All these things start with a technical issue,” he said. “For the most part, continuous bad driving is a technical issue that turns into a mental issue.”

There were moments along the way when Lee thought it might be time to quit. Close friend Michelle Wie West saw it and could’ve seen things going either way.

“Yes, because it got so bad,” said Wie West of whether or not Lee would walk away, “but no because I always felt like she felt it was unfinished business.”

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The first time Lee met Wie West was at the 2009 U.S. Women’s Open when she was 14 years old. Lee’s father had convinced her to join the Wie family in player dining that week. It was Wie West’s time at Stanford that inspired Lee to continue with her studies and social life at UCLA even after she joined the tour.

Both players felt it was the best decision they could’ve made, getting out of the alternate reality that tour life often brings.

“So many weeks I’m moping around, depressed, lonely,” said Lee. “It’s nice to talk to friends who experience day-to-day life so completely differently than me. It kind of grounds me a little bit.”

The frustration of a missed three-footer, for example, melts away when a friend who teaches special ed talks about a student who suffered a seizure in class.

Such perspective is priceless in the midst of nightmarish yips.

Wie West experienced the putting yips three times over the course of her career. Stan Utley was the one who helped her escape.

“You just black out, you lose all sensation,” she said. “Having the yips is like the wildest thing in sports. Something that is so simple, and you just all of a get clammy hands, start shaking, heart palpitations.”

When Wie West won the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open at Pinehurst No. 2, she hit a 3-wood stinger off the tee because she didn’t feel comfortable with driver. Another year, the former phenom played a huge cut all season because she couldn’t hit a draw.

“You don’t really want to talk about it,” said Wie West of being uncomfortable over the ball. “You just act like this is the new norm; pretend it doesn’t exist.”

It took Lee several years to get her driver sorted, and early last year, she struggled mightily with her putter, saying she had the yips there, too. At the LPGA Drive On event in Arizona last spring, she hit 16 greens and had 38 putts.

“I hit every shot to 10 feet and walked off the green three-putting,” she recalled.

Mayson had urged Lee to see a putting coach for a long time, but she was stubborn about it until this summer when she finally hired Chris Cho.

Lee played her last three events of 2023 on the LPGA in 56 under par, and that doesn’t include the 61-61-65 she shot in Saudi Arabia on the LET to win by eight.

“Golf is really 95 percent confidence,” said Wie West.

To that end, Lee points to several people who have boosted her mentally. Mayson, she said, radiates confidence. His calming presence balances out her worried nature.

At the CME Group Tour Championship last year, Lee told the media that she played in a pro-am with Fred Couples last September and that he’d become her No. 1 fan.

“He just was hammering into me like, ‘You need to believe; you’re a good player,’ ” said Lee. “You need to go out there and believe you’re the shit and you can do it.”

Lee’s inner-circle also includes boyfriend Trey Kidd, the kind-hearted owner of Bear the rescue dog. Lee and Kidd were introduced by a mutual friend near the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Kidd, a former college player at Colorado State who now works in finance, plays off a plus-three handicap. If Lee plays from the back tees, she doesn’t have to give him any strokes.

Lee said when the 6-foot-6 Kidd hit a growth spurt in junior golf, he too struggled with the driver yips. When it comes to finding a partner who understands Lee’s world, the Vegas resident seems to have hit the proverbial jackpot.

In addition to Cho, there’s a less obvious change in Lee’s daily routine that helped shift her focus in 2023. For the first time since high school, she took up recreational reading – in a big way.

Lee read over 40 books in 2023. She’d get lost in fictional worlds created by Sarah J. Mass. The one-hour bus ride to the course in South Korea flew by as Lee immersed herself in the “Throne of Glass” series. When play slowed down during practice rounds, she’d sometimes got out her Kindle and read a few pages.

“I think it was honestly the best thing for me,” said Lee, “putting myself in this alternative universe, and like kind of living there so I don’t have to almost face what’s going on now. And not that I wasn’t facing it, it just kind of muted the whole thing.”

The 2024 season presents massive opportunities for Lee, who has risen to No. 18 in the Rolex Rankings. She was crushed to not make the Solheim Cup team last year. She’s high on captain Stacy Lewis’ 2024 list though, and in position to potentially represent the U.S. at the Paris Olympics, too.

Lee turns 29 later this month and aims to treat this like an all-or-nothing year.

Whatever happens, she’ll be open about it, because as Lee looks around and sees players on tour who are lost like she once was, she wants them to know they’re not alone.

“I didn’t want to be the one to talk to other girls and ask them what their experiences were like,” said Lee. “I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was embarrassed. I felt so ashamed that I wasn’t playing well.”

But she didn’t quit.

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Nichols: So many LPGA players who thought about calling it quits enjoyed breakthroughs in 2023

May the journeys of those who triumphed in 2023 be a source of inspiration to those on the verge of calling it quits.

Lindy Duncan, the 208th-ranked player in the world, considered 2023 to be a make-or-break year. She began the season with no status, and told herself, I’m either going to get better at golf, or I’m going to do something else.

Last November at The Annika, the penultimate event of the LPGA season, Duncan emerged from the scoring tent on Sunday in a jolly good mood. She’d finished the season 92nd on the CME points list, her card secured for another year.

“I feel like I’m playing some of the best that I’ve played,” she said, “ever.”

While Duncan wasn’t in the headlines this season, her comeback story is one of many. Lilia Vu thought about going to law school not long ago, after a 2019 rookie season on the LPGA left her feeling “destroyed.” Vu’s mother convinced her to keep going.

“I just remember being miserable,” said Vu. “This is like the dream, everything we ever worked for was to be out here, and I was just not in the right mindset for it.”

But Vu dug deep, used her late grandfather’s strength as motivation and soared to No. 1 in the world after winning four times in 2023, including two majors.

2023 AIG Women's Open
Lilia Vu celebrates on the 18th green after winning the 2023 AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath Golf Club in Surrey, England. (Photo: Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

Ruoning Yin missed the cut in seven of her first nine starts as a rookie last year. She, too, called home and told her mom she wanted to quit. She was hitting it poorly, which led her to practice even harder, ballooning from 100 balls per range session to 500.

Now she was fed up and in pain.

“My mom told me, if you cannot swing just don’t swing,” recalled Yin, “just do your putting drills, practice putting and chipping – you’ll be fine. No matter what, we still love you.”

That message gave Yin the peace she needed to power through. She tied for fourth at the Dana Open in Toledo and never looked back. Now a major champion and budding star in China, Yin ranks No. 2 in the world behind Vu.

Coming back from maternity leave proved more stressful than Azahara Munoz imagined. The battle to keep her tour card made her feel like throwing up all week at The Annika. Munoz came into the event 100th on the CME points list. The top 100 keep full status for 2024. Munoz said she was so stressed out she didn’t even want to tee it up.

“I was like, if this is how stressful it is, I don’t know if I want to play golf,” she said. “It’s no fun at all.”

Azahara Munoz of Spain plays a shot on the 16th hole during the final round of The ANNIKA driven by Gainbridge at Pelican on Nov. 12, 2023, in Belleair, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

Munoz ultimately played well enough to contend that event, vaulting up to 64th on the points list after taking a share of second at Pelican Golf Club.

Players in all stages of life and career face turning points, and there were stories of triumph around every corner this season.

Alison Lee has been open about her rock bottom. After her parents convinced her in 2019 to give it one more try, Lee Monday-qualified to get into an early-season event in 2020 and knew that if she played well, she’d move up the priority list on the next reshuffle and get into more fields.

But then she had a panic attack on the drive to the golf course.

“Every mile I got closer to the course,” Lee wrote on lpga.com, “the more anxiety overcame my body. I couldn’t breathe, and I could hardly see with all the tears streaming down my face. The feelings became so overwhelming that I began to look at the concrete barrier on the interstate and considered crashing my car into it, because I would rather have been in the hospital than have to tee off and compete. In that moment, anywhere else besides the golf course felt safe.”

The pressure to win on the LPGA took Lee to a dark place.

In 2023, Lee came closer than ever to finally achieving that lifelong goal. And while she didn’t get there, finishing runner-up in her last three events left her feeling rejuvenated. All signs point to Lee’s best golf being ahead of her.

“All the dreams I had when I turned pro nine years ago, I haven’t been able to accomplish any of them,” said Lee.

“If my career starts now at the age of 28, of course I want to keep going. I still have a lot of goals I want to achieve that 19-year-old Alison, when she turned pro, all the things she wanted to accomplish.”

Alison Lee of the United States plays her shot from the third tee during the third round of the CME Group Tour Championship at Tiburon Golf Club on November 18, 2023, in Naples, Florida. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Duncan, 32, was the NGCA National Player of the Year as a junior at Duke. She was a first-team All-American all four seasons and earned LPGA status soon after graduation.

If Duncan could go back 10 years and give her younger self some advice, she’d say to find joy in the pursuit rather than the destination.

“And she wouldn’t understand it,” Duncan said with a laugh.

Duncan still gets a mighty thrill from competition. She loves traveling to Asia for tournaments. She’s hitting it farther than ever and feels healthy enough to keep up the grind.

When Duncan started 2023 with no status and no sponsors, she thought about what her next chapter might look like, should the season not go as planned. While she didn’t get far enough in that thought exercise to have the details planned out, she came to this conclusion: “I’m going to be OK.”

Lindy Duncan of the United States hits her tee shot on the 10th hole during the second round of the TOTO Japan Classic at the Taiheiyo Club’s Minori Course on November 3, 2023, in Omitama, Ibaraki, Japan. (Photo by Yoshimasa Nakano/Getty Images)

That gave her the peace and the clarity to put it all on the line once more.

Comebacks come in all shapes and sizes, but the feelings of joy and satisfaction are universal.

May the journeys of those who triumphed in 2023 be a source of inspiration to those on the verge of calling it quits.

Just think, Lilia Vu could be nearly done with law school by now.

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Amy Yang wins LPGA season finale at 2023 CME Group Tour Championship

This is Yang’s first win since 2019.

NAPLES, Fla. – Amy Yang battles something she calls “ego talk.” It’s the stuff she tells herself that gets in the way when the pressure is on. She dealt with it early on Sunday at the CME Group Tour Championship, when she doubted herself and wondered if the day would end with just another close call.

This time, however, Yang shut down that ego talk.

“This is very meaningful,” said Yang in her new bright blue blazer, the CME trophy by her side and a $2 million cardboard check somewhere nearby.

Yang, 34, stayed strong down the stretch mentally at Tiburon Golf Club, where she holed out for eagle on the 13th hole and birdied the last two to win by three over Alison Lee and Nasa Hataoka. It was Yang’s first LPGA title since 2019, her fifth overall, and her first on U.S. soil.

Amy Yang of Korea celebrates with the CME Globe trophy and her check during the trophy ceremony after winning the CME Group Tour Championship at Tiburon Golf Club on November 19, 2023 in Naples, Florida. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

For Lee, finishing runner-up in her last three LPGA events felt bittersweet. While she’s playing the best golf of her life, that elusive first LPGA victory remains out of reach.

Good friend Megan Khang, who finally broke through with her first victory earlier this year at the CPKC Women’s Open in her 191st career start, sat in on Lee’s post-round press conference.

“This isn’t really a question,” said Khang as she took the mic, “but as a friend, I am a proud of you. You’ve been playing so good, Alison. It’s coming.”

An emotional Lee, who made her 179th career start at the CME, has credited new friend Fred Couples with helping instill the confidence she’s felt in recent months, noting that he texts her daily with words of encouragement.

“So many times I would joke around saying I’m just never going to win out here,” said Lee, who was a standout amateur player at UCLA before turning professional. “I really didn’t think I could ever do it.

“But to play the last three weeks just continuously putting the pressure on everyone on the leaderboard and putting myself in contention has just been really cool for me and been a really awesome experience.”

It wasn’t long ago that Yang, who suffered from tennis elbow after too much rock climbing, wondered if her career might come to an end earlier than expected. She also wondered how much longer she wanted to keep grinding through tour life.

Longtime coach Tony Ziegler told her life’s too short to keep playing if she wasn’t happy. She needed to make a decision.

Two weeks later, Yang came back and told him that she wanted to keep playing and she wanted to win. Ziegler repeated what he’s said to her often in recent years: “Your best golf is ahead of you.”

“Back in the day,” said Ziegler, “when she played really good golf, she had a lot of pressure and expectation, and she didn’t know how to deal with it.

“As she’s gotten older, she knows how to deal with it.”

The woman who had a smiley face stitched on the front of her visors beamed after that final-round 66. She finished at 27-under 261 for the tournament, shattering the event’s previous record by four shots.

For a long time, Yang was always in the best-to-never-win-a-major conversation on the LPGA. With 21 top-10 finishes at the majors, including two top 5s this season, she mostly flies under the radar at big events now.

“She’s just at ease with herself, no pressure, no expectation,” said Ziegler. “Basically playing for herself.”

Yang enjoyed a champagne bath on the 18th green after many of her friends came out to celebrate. Even before the injury, a burned-out Yang wondered if it might be best to retire. In time, she learned how to create a more balanced life, and wrapped up her 16th season on tour looking like a woman who has more time to shine.

 “You know,” said Yang, “I still can’t believe I did it.”

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5 things to know about the CME, including how Fred Couples got Alison Lee to believe in herself

“Like (Couples) just was hammering into me like, you need to believe.”

NAPLES, Fla. – Scores at the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship continue to plummet at Tiburon Golf Club as Alison Lee and Nasa Hataoka set a new 36-hole scoring record of 14-under 130.

With a $2 million winner’s check on the line to close out the year, expect plenty of fireworks as many of the hottest players in the game continue to show strong form down the stretch.

As Lee looks to win for the first time in 179 starts on the LPGA, veteran Amy Yang looks to win for the first time on American soil while Nasa Hataoka looks to close out a big title after several close calls at the majors in 2023.

Here are five things to know heading into the weekend in Naples:

Alison Lee wins by eight in Saudi Arabia with record-setting performance

One week after Alison Lee lost in a playoff on the LPGA, she ran laps around the field in Riyadh.

One week after Alison Lee lost in a playoff on the LPGA, she ran laps around the field in Saudi Arabia. Lee shot a mind-boggling 61-61-65 at the Ladies European Tour’s Aramco Team Series event at Riyadh Golf Club.

Lee smashed the LET’s 36-hole scoring record by six shots with her 22-under total.

She went on to beat the field by eight shots, finishing at 29-under 187, which matches the tour’s tournament scoring record. Spain’s Carlota Ciganda, the recent hero of the Solheim Cup, finished solo second after rounds of 65-63-67. Charley Hull finished third at 18 under.

“I made a lot of really good putts,” said Lee of her opening brilliance. “Statistically [this season], driver, greens-in-regulation, everything’s been really good. But I just haven’t been able to get that confidence in the putter and that’s been the biggest thing.”

On the LPGA, the American Lee lost in overtime last Sunday to Australia’s Minjee Lee at the BMW Ladies Championship. Alison has two other top-10 finishes on the LPGA this season.

Alison’s first professional victory came at the 2021 Aramco event at Sotogrande. A former No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, the 28-year-old former UCLA student turned professional in 2014 after winning the final stage of LPGA Q-School.

Lilia Vu, a two-time major winner who currently ranks No. 1 in the world, finished eighth in Saudi Arabia. Minjee placed sixth.

The LET’s Saudi-backed events remain controversial given the wide-ranging human rights abuses Saudi Arabia has been accused of, especially toward women.

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Alison Lee smashes 36-hole scoring record on LET after consecutive 61s

“But yeah, like I said I’m really happy with my round.”

Alison Lee has had a record-setting start at the Aramco Team Series Riyadh in Saudi Arabia on the Ladies European Tour.

Lee, the 28-year-old American, finished second last week at the LPGA’s BMW Ladies Championship in Korea. This week, she’s well on her way to hoisting a trophy after posting consecutive 61s at Riyadh Golf Club.

With a 36-hole score of 22 under, Lee smashed the previous two-day tally set by Gwladys Nocera (2008 Goteborg Masters), Kylie Henry (2014 Ladies German Open), Anne van Dam (2018 Estralla Damm Ladies Open) and Emily Kristine Pedersen (2020 Tipsport Czech Ladies Open), which stood at 16-under. Her 61s match the lowest round in LET history, and in the opening round, she set a new record with eight consecutive birdies.

“If you told me at the beginning of the week I was going to shoot 22 under after two days I wouldn’t have believed you,” Lee said. “So I’m really happy with where I am right now. I made a lot of really good putts. Statistically [this season], driver, greens-in-regulation, everything’s been really good. But I just haven’t been able to get that confidence in the putter and that’s been the biggest thing.

“[But] this week I feel really good, the speed has been great. I’ve been able to putt very aggressively, especially out here which you need [to do] if you want to make birdies. I wish I could give you an answer as to why. I’ve been working really hard with my putting coach back home.”

Lee had a putt for 60 on the closing hole, but her birdie attempt came up just short. However, a tap-in for 61 and a six-shot lead over Carlota Ciganda made for the best 36-hole stretch of her career.

“With five holes left, I kind of knew right then and there, ‘OK, let’s try and make a charge here,'” Lee continued. “Unfortunately, I left my putt short on 16, so I was a little disappointed. And it was a tricky putt I had [on 18]. I had to take it out pretty far to the left and let it break.

“But yeah, like I said I’m really happy with my round.”

Minjee Lee claims 10th career LPGA title in a playoff at BMW Ladies Championship

Lee is now the third player from Australia to reach double-digits LPGA victories.

Minjee Lee recorded her 10th career victory at the BMW Ladies Championship in South Korea in a playoff over Alison Lee. It was a rematch of the 2012 U.S. Girls’ Junior final, which Minjee happened to win as well.

“I was like, this kind of feels familiar,” said the 27-year-old Aussie.

Minjee became the fifth player this season to win multiple titles when she drained a 6-foot birdie putt on the first extra hole. The American Alison Lee, a former top-ranked amateur, is still waiting on her maiden LPGA victory. Minjee won Cincinnati’s Kroger Queen City Championship in September.

“Out of all the places, Korea was always at the top of my list because my parents are Korean and I have a heritage to Korea,” said Minjee. “This one is special, and especially having all of my family and extended family and friends coming out to cheer for me today, it was really cool to see them on the sidelines when I was walking down. It was great that I was able to win today.”

Minjee earned $330,000 for her victory, giving her $1,552,475 for the season. It’s her second victory in her last three starts. She is now the third player from Australia to reach double digits in tour victories, joining Jan Stephenson (16) and Karrie Webb (41).

A two-time major winner who has now won in each of her last three LPGA seasons, Minjee closed with a 4-under 68 at Seowon Hills at Seowon Valley Country Club to finish at 16 under while Alison, a former UCLA standout, birdied her last two holes in regulation to shoot 67.

“I feel like I’m hitting it so well and I had so many putts this week lip out,” said Alison, “and I can’t stop thinking about all those small mistakes that I potentially made.”

Lydia Ko, playing on a sponsor invite, closed with a third consecutive 69 to finish third, two strokes back. The season has been largely a struggle for Ko, who hadn’t previously cracked the top 10 since February in Thailand.

“I feel like I’ve been moving in the right direction and felt like I was moving in the right direction, but the results weren’t really a good reflection of that,” said Ko, who won the BMW last year. “So at least this week is a confirmation to say, hey, it’s not dead yet.”

American Angel Yin, who won her first LPGA title last week in Shanghai, closed with a 67 to finish fourth.

South Africa’s Ashleigh Buhai came into the final round tied with Minjee at 12 under but dropped to a share of 13th after a final-round 74. Buhai did win $10,000 in unofficial money from the tournament for setting a BMW scoring record of 10-under 62 in the first round.

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