Minjee Lee not giving up on Australian Open dream
Darren Walton |
Minjee Lee is drawing on memories of one of her greatest triumphs for the final round at the Australian Open in Sydney.
Minjee and brother Min Woo Lee remain in the hunt to complete an unprecedented family double act at The Australian Golf Club on Sunday.
But Minjee knows she must emulate her recovery mission at the 2021 Evian Championship in France, where the Perth prodigy fought back from seven shots down entering the final round, to meet her end of the bargain.
Minjee is sitting third in the women’s Open, seven strokes behind South Africa’s defending champion Ashleigh Buhai and four back of South Korea’s 2013 champion and former world No.1 Jiyai Shin.
“I’ll just have to post a really low score but I think I can do it,” said Australia’s world No.5.
“I’m going to do my very best, like I always do, and hopefully we’ve both got the trophy by the end of Sunday. It would be amazing, but I think I have some work to do.”
Min Woo is much better placed, sharing the lead in the men’s component of the dual-gender Open with Japan’s Rikuya Hoshino.
The pair are playing in the last group together for the second Sunday in a row after Lee won last week’s duel to claim the Australian PGA Championship.
Not only is the first sister-brother Open double a possibility, if Min Woo Lee can get his hands on the Stonehaven Cup, the 25-year-old will join legends Kel Nagle (1959), Peter Thomson (1967) and Greg Norman (1985) and modern-day Australian greats Peter Lonard (2004), Robert Allenby (2005) and Greg Chalmers (2011) as only the seventh player to achieve the rare feat of a PGA and Open double.
“If I win, I win and last week was last week,” Lee shrugged.
“I played great then, so hopefully I can finish it off tomorrow. I know there’s a lot of history to it, but it’s just another tournament.
“If it goes well, it goes well.”
The leaders hold a one-shot buffer over Englishman Alex Fitzpatrick, the younger brother of 2022 US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick, and American Patrick Rodgers.
Lee’s fellow Australian Lucas Herbert is just two strokes off the pace in outright fifth.
The men’s and women’s last groups were scheduled to tee off after midday AEDT.
AAP
