PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 17, 2024

Min Woo Lee

Valhalla Golf Club

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Min Woo Lee is with us at the 106th PGA Championship. Min Woo, a 5-under 66 for you today. What went well out there for you.

MIN WOO LEE: A few chip-ins, which was nice. That definitely helped the scorecard. But a bit more solid than yesterday. Yesterday I just had a few missed iron shots, and today it was trending in the right direction. Yeah, the chip-ins were nice, obviously, and those were three birdies, so yeah, it was most of the score.

Q. Can you take us through a couple of those chip-ins? I know you had the long one at 16. Do you consider short game a really big strength of yours?

MIN WOO LEE: Yeah, it's a weird one. The last couple weeks I haven't chipped as good as I normally do. Normally I would have a chip-in a tournament, and I would chip it on a decent lie, I would probably nearly close to hole it or be around the hole, but the last couple weeks it's been pretty average, so it's nice for the confidence to hole three of them. They weren't easy ones.

16 was pretty special. It was in deep rough into the grain, and I was just trying to get it on the green close, and it ended up going in.

It was just one of those days where it kind of went my way. Yeah, they just dropped.

Q. Would you consider those pretty hard just up-and-downs? Never mind holing them, just to get up-and-down around here --

MIN WOO LEE: Yeah, for sure. 16, if you can get up-and-down there, out of 10 times, three times, you're doing pretty good. That one was definitely a bonus.

I holed one on -- I holed a short one that was kind of tough. It was like down and up the tier. I don't remember the third one.

But yeah, it's nice.

Q. 72-66, that's a nice progression. What do you need to do to keep that trend going?

MIN WOO LEE: I think my iron play needs to be a bit better. Again, the chip-ins were great. Iron play wasn't that good. Made up for it with the chipping.

Just got to lock in with the irons a bit more. I'll go to the range later and try to figure it out.

I think to win or play well at these events, you've got to hit it good. You've got to hit it in the right spots, which I did better than yesterday. I've been driving it really well and putting well. Hopefully the irons cooperate, and low scores.

Q. Obviously a tragic and unfortunate morning. Wonder what your experience was like getting into the course this morning in terms of what time you arrived, how long it took, that sort of thing.

MIN WOO LEE: Yeah, it was a weird morning. Obviously it's very sad about the news. Then obviously Scottie, what happened to Scottie.

I got in at, I would say, 5:30, around there, I would say, maybe -- somewhere around there. It was just a weird one. Obviously so much traffic. I don't know, I was a bit shook about what happened on both the scenarios. I mean, during the round it was even hard to just concentrate, and I had to make sure to keep my head in the game because I wouldn't want that to happen to anyone, and yeah, obviously what happened to Scottie was very scary, too. Hopefully he's okay.

Q. You actually tweeted about Scottie. Why? What compelled you to do that?

MIN WOO LEE: Yeah, it was just more like -- I thought it was a little overreaction. Personally I went around traffic, and I was following cars -- a Lexus car that was one of the courtesy cars. I just thought it was more -- I thought it was a bit of an overreaction. A lot of people were doing it. He was in a courtesy car, too, so I don't know what kind of caused it.

It was just more -- yeah, there was no really meaning to it. I just thought it was an overreaction, and I just wanted to make it a situation where -- it was just a strange morning.