Danny Lee wins at second LIV Golf appearance
Danny Lee – in action this week – photo Sam Greeenwood
Danny Lee, in just his second appearance in a LIV Golf event, has holed a 25 foot putt from off the green at the third extra playoff hole in Tuscon to defeat Brendan Steele, Louis Oosthuizen and Carlos Ortiz to win his first event anywhere in nearly eight years.
32 year old Lee was born in Korea but was schooled in Rotorua in New Zealand and spent his formative years there before winning the 2008 US Amateur Championship, then the 2009 Johnnie Walker Classic and moving to the US and eventually joining the PGA Tour in 2012 via the Korn Ferry Tour where he had won in 2011.
“I mean, it feels pretty amazing, said Lee soon after his victory. “Last win I had was 2015 at Greenbrier. That was also a four-man playoff. Maybe it was a coincidence, I don’t know. But it feels pretty amazing right now.
“I was falling apart a little bit the last couple years because of my injury, and outside of my golf situation, but starting this year, I was just hitting it well, and I just had to get my putter working somehow. That’s why I switched to the long putter. I’m just happy to see I’m making great progress.
Lee made special mention of the talks he had with Kevin Na about the switch he as making to LIV Golf
“I mean, it was a life-changing decision. To be honest, I wasn’t getting what everybody’s like thing, like everybody is getting like $100 million, $50 million, $30 million. I wasn’t in that situation. Kevin just called me, hey, do you want to come over and play for my team.
“I thought about it, and I looked at the schedule. There’s three events I really like. Tucson wasn’t in my head, but Mayakoba, I always played well there, Greenbrier, I won there, and then Singapore, Sentosa, which we’re going to come back to, I have played well there before.
“Then Kevin just told me that I know you’re working hard, you’re so — he could see that my game is so close to being great, but he told me that this environment of LIV Golf is probably better for me than staying out on the PGA TOUR.
“The reason he told me that was probably I tend to play too many weeks in a row, and then — I mean, you can’t play great every single round. You’re going to have one bad round. On a fourth or fifth week in a row and when you have a really, really bad first round, sometimes it’s really mentally hard to grind it out for that second round to make the cut.
“That kind of stuff was a little different, but here, you only have 14 events. You’ve got to make most of it, and I don’t want to let anybody down on my team.
“I’ve been working so hard the last couple weeks. I never practiced that much in my life. Between me, Sihwan and Kevin, we were playing so many rounds together, range balls together, just talk about what would be the best way to get better, and showing signs already.
Lee has experienced injury issues of late but last month made the decision after recording just one top ten on the PGA Tour in his previous 27 starts, to join LIV Golf.
In his ten years on the PGA Tour, he has accumulated earnings of close to US$15 million but today’s victory is worth US$ 4 million plus another US$125,000 for assisting his team to 3rd place in the teams event.
Matt Jones finished as the leading Australian when he shared 6th place with three others while Marc Leishman, who led for much of the event, faltered with a final round of 6 over to finish in a share of 13th.
Cameron Smith finished 24th in the 48 man field while Jed Morgan finished 47th.
