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KINGSMILL CHAMPIONSHIP PRESENTED BY JTBCMay 18, 2015Minjee LeeWILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA MODERATOR: Good morning, everybody. We would like to welcome the 2015 Kingsmill champion, Minjee Lee, out to the media center. Great playing this week. Obviously it was pretty long, but how is does it feel to come off 18th a champion? MINJEE LEE: Pretty damn good. (Laughter.) I didn't think that moment would come this year, so I'm stoked to have won. Yeah, I just feel really, really great. MODERATOR: You'll actually be the seventh player to get your LPGA victory before your 19th birthday. You squeezed it in there. MINJEE LEE: Just. MODERATOR: This is your first LPGA win. You're just a rookie. How exciting is that for you knowing you've accomplished this already this early? MINJEE LEE: Just because I won in my rookie season, I feel like I could probably do it again. Just kind of gives me confidence that I can play and win out here. So just a great confidence booster. MODERATOR: You mentioned yesterday that during the rain delay you had a banana and that spurred your spree there. What did you eat this morning? MINJEE LEE: Rice and soup. I'm still Asian even though I'm Australian. MODERATOR: You mentioned this gives you a lot of confidence. Alison Lee was up there with the on the leaderboard all week. What does it mean for you two rookies to have such a great performance here? MINJEE LEE: I know we're rookies, but I feel like so many rookies are doing so well. I think we kind of found that kind of fire in us to play well. I think we both want to do really well because so many rookies are winning and doing so well out here. MODERATOR: So $195,000 check for the winner. What do you plan on doing with it? MINJEE LEE: Have a good meal with my mom, a lot of good meals, and just buy her a present. Buy myself a birthday present. MODERATOR: No big vacation? MINJEE LEE: Maybe at the end of the year. MODERATOR: Questions. Q. Was it easier to handle having a four‑shot lead because you didn't have a lot of the time to think about it because you had to just get up and get out here? MINJEE LEE: Yeah, I mean, I didn't think about it a lot anyway. Because it was such a quick turnaround there was not enough time to get it processing in my head. Yeah, I think so. Q. The three‑putt on the first hole knock you off kilter at all? MINJEE LEE: No, not really. The goal was to make ‑‑ well, the two and a half holes I had left to make pars. Wasn't so bad. Q. How did you come to make the caddie switch this week and get hooked up with Jeremy Young? MINJEE LEE: My manager helped, so it was really good timing. Just he happened to be available, so I was like, Yay. I can use him. MODERATOR: Will he be staying around quite a bit? MINJEE LEE: I hope so. If he likes me. MODERATOR: I think you have a little more say than that. Q. Did you foresee this week? Were there any indications that you had over the previous week or two that you had a week like this in you? MINJEE LEE: Not really. I mean, I've had a pretty good start to the season, but I didn't really see this coming. I definitely didn't expect anything coming into this week. I just wanted to have a really good week. I was actually trying to get ready to play the qualifier, but I don't have to anymore. Q. You had such a good year last year with the amateur win on the Australian tour and then the other amateur titles, but this has got to be ‑‑ MINJEE LEE: ‑‑ the best. Q. Yeah, far beyond that, correct? MINJEE LEE: Those experiences were really, really great, but it's pretty nice to get a check and win on the LPGA. Q. Could you talk a little bit about the par putts at 17 and 18? Coming off 16, you dropped two strokes immediately, and now it looks like it's quick and interesting. How important to you were those putts? Any pressure? Any apprehension there? MINJEE LEE: Well, on 17 I didn't know Alison made birdie, so that was pretty comfortable. I had like a foot for par, so that wasn't‑‑ yeah, I didn't really feel any pressure there. But on the next hole I looked at the leaderboard and I saw she made birdie, so I kind of thought, I'll just do everything I can in my control. I just knocked in on and two‑putted for par. MODERATOR: You and Alison actually have known each op other for a bit. Talk about your relationship and if you've played together in the past. I know you were paired together this weekend as well, so... MINJEE LEE: The first time I met her was U.S. Girls in 2012. We were in the finals together. Yeah, that was the first time I met her. Then a couple years after we met in U.S. Ams. I never actually played with her. I think just in the same event. And then I met her again at Q‑School. Over the years I've gotten to know her pretty well. She's very bubbly and friendly, so it's really great to be friends with her. Q. You mentioned that obviously this is very exciting and a good confidence booster. Talk about the adjustment of coming on to the LPGA, life on tour, and trying to get your game squared away and everything. MINJEE LEE: Yeah, I mean, coming from amateur to professional golf is actually quite different. I think it's mentally quite strange because you play week in week out. I know there are like gaps, but it's still really short if you think about it. It's one week home for three or four weeks each time. So mentally it's like a battlefield out here. As you know. So that was quite hard for me to adjust the first couple months. I think physically you have to work out a little bit more.  Stamina, you have to have a bit more stamina to get through those weeks. Yeah, it is a little bit different, but I think it just takes a little time to get adjusted to. Q. You mentioned that transition to the professional tour and the mental battlefield especially. Given all that, how comforting is it for you to have your mom traveling with you, cooking, just to talk you to, and those kind of things? MINJEE LEE: Definitely I'm very lucky to have her out here. Just having someone out here I think is a big support. I mean, she's my main support. It's very nice to have her telling me that I'm good enough and I can win out here. Yeah, it's nice. Although my dad and my brothers are home. They tell me that, too, but it's different. Q. Was it your family who encouraged you at first to play golf? Is that how you came to the game? MINJEE LEE: Yeah. Mainly my mom. I used to swim when I was eight and nine, but obviously I'm probably not tall enough to swim. Golf was probably the best choice for me out of the two. MODERATOR: One third of the way through the 2015 season. What else can we expect from you now that you're a champion on the LPGA? MINJEE LEE: I guess you'll see. MODERATOR: All right. Leave us hanging. Thank you so much. Congratulations. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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