Minjee Lee – in action this week – photo KLPGA
Australian golfers have finished in the runner-up position in two events in Asia this weekend, Minjee Lee missing out after a playoff at the KLPGA’s Hana Bank Financial Services Championship in Incheon in South Korea and Travis Smyth finishing runner-up at an Asian Tour event in Chinese Taipei.
Smyth, chasing a successful defense of the Yeangder TPC event at the Linkou International Golf and Country Club in Taipei, his only victory on the Asian Tour, produced an impressive final round of 67 to finish three shots behind Thailand’s Poom Saksansin and earned US$82,500 in the process.
Smyth, a beneficiary of the Asian Tour’s close association with LIV Golf and that tour’s benefactors in 2022, recorded his best finish since winning this same event twelve months ago and was delighted with the quality of his game this week.
“Played pretty damn good, I shot bogey-free five under,” said the 28-year-old from Wollongong..
“I had a lot of looks, wasn’t able to keep it going, but can’t really ask for much more. If you had told me you can have that before the round, I would have said yes, probably, so it was a good day.
“I love this place and I think this course likes me as well. You know, I hit it in the trees a couple of times and got some lucky kicks back into the fairway and that sort of thing. I don’t know, I just got a good feeling about this place. And yeah, two years in a row. It’s funny, you know, because I came here before I won, I played here one other time, and I hated it. I played terrible (then).
“It was my first year on the Asian Tour then and I couldn’t figure out the grain, putted awfully, and I don’t know. I just feel like playing in Asia for so long now I can read the lies from the rough, I can read the greens a lot better, a lot more comfortable. And I don’t know what it is, I like this place.”
Queensland’s Douglas Klein also had a good week when he finished as the next best of the Australians in a share of 9th place, his first top ten in his rookie season in Asia.
Meanwhile, in Korea, Minjee Lee was on track to record a consecutive win after her success in Ohio two weeks ago when she finished in a share of first place with local Da Yeon Lee and Thailand’s Patty Tavatanakit before losing at the third extra hole to Da Yeon Lee who holed from just under 30 feet for birdie after Tavatanakit had been eliminated with a bogey at the first playoff hole.
Both Lees three putted the second playoff hole, Minjee Lee’s seocn putt from less than 4 feet but when the Australian hit her approach to 9 feet behind the hole in her third time of trying it appeared she would be given another chance to claim victory.
It was not to be however as the Korean holed a downhill left-to-right putt and when Minjee Lee pushed her birdie attempt to the right it was all over.
Lee had birdied the 17th from 10th feet in regulation play to join the lead in the event and her putt to win in regulation at the 18th sat agonisingly on the edge of the hole and so it was onto the playoff.
For Lee however, it continues a fine late-year resurgence following on from her first win of the year in Ohio recently.
Travis Smyth – File photo Paul Lakatos Asian Tour
