ATLANTA — A note for all the kids out there who are surely reading this article: Don’t let your parents limit your YouTube time! And if they try, tell them they’re keeping you from being a professional golfer!
Coming into the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup playoffs, Min Woo Lee was struggling. Ranked 31st in the world, 21st in the field of 30, Lee hadn’t won on Tour since March 2025. Three days ago, he posted a message on Instagram: “Average 2 weeks. Onto the Season finale, Down In Atlanta.”
You could feel the resignation radiating from the post.
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“It was probably the saddest I’ve been on the golf course, which is not good,” he said Thursday afternoon. “We’re really lucky to be out here and play some good golf to get into the playoffs. It just felt so hard.”
For his first three holes on Thursday at East Lake Golf Club, Lee was the definition of average once again. But after a trio of pars, Lee caught fire, and cooked with eight birdies over the final 15 holes. He finished the day with a 62 that left him at -8, two strokes clear of the field but two strokes short of Zach Johnson’s 60 in 2007.
“This week was a brand-new week, and we obviously play from scratch and everyone plays from the same score,” Lee said. “Being out there, I thought, Why not give it a good crack and have a good attitude? That was probably a thing that I had to work on over the last two weeks.”
The new attitude helped, and so did a late change to his irons, combined with a review of YouTube highlights of past performances at East Lake. This is Lee’s first time on the property, and he needed to familiarize himself with the layout. “I know the course has changed a tiny bit,” he said. “I know the guys that have played really well here.”
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Many, though not all, of those guys struggled on Thursday. Viktor Hovland, 2023 champion, is one of three sitting two strokes behind Lee, along with Chris Gotterup and Collin Morikawa. Three-time champion Rory McIlroy is at -2, mired deep in the field at T20. Last year’s champion, Tommy Fleetwood, sits at -4, tied for 8th, while Scottie Scheffler is lurking at -5 after closing with two birdies.
“This week, you just have to perform and get the best out of yourself for one week,” Hovland said. “I feel like when I can put myself in that mindset, I tend to get a lot out of my game.”
This year’s tournament is a winner-take-all affair, as opposed to previous years where players received a stroke advantage based on where they’d finished during the season. That means players deep in the field — like, say, Lee — don’t need to be quite as aggressive to mount a charge up the leaderboard.
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“I think you treat it like any other tournament,” Morikawa said. “You’re not playing more aggressive just because you only have four rounds to end the season. You’re not going to do anything stupid.”
The Tour Championship, with a $40 million purse and a $10 million first prize, continues through Sunday and wraps up the 2026 PGA Tour season.
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