THE 154TH OPEN

July 16, 2026

Min Woo Lee

Mixed Zone

Q. Min, that was a really good performance, battling performance today. How would you sum it up?

MIN WOO LEE: Good in the way of that. A bit of grit and bit of patience. I think if I hit it like that a couple years ago or last year, I would have probably made a lot more bogeys. It was good to grind it out and shoot level-par.

I didn't have too much going great. So it was good to grind it out.

Q. The putting was clutch today. You've been working on that with Richie.

MIN WOO LEE: Yeah.

Q. How much have you been working behind the scenes to get that right?

MIN WOO LEE: Yeah, I've been putting cross-handed for a long time now, maybe four or five years, and it got to a point where it didn't look fundamentally right. I mean, the results weren't showing it. So went to conventional.

Yeah, just been doing a lot of work the last month or so. It's been feeling pretty good, really good, I would say. Tempo work, face angle work, everything pretty much. It seemed like it matched up -- has been matching up really good. So I'm glad to find it.

Q. The conditions were tricky out there?

MIN WOO LEE: We didn't have too much wind early on, but it wasn't as tough, but I think it's picking up a little bit and making it just a bit tricky enough. Obviously the fairways are very firm, so it's quite hard to hold the fairways if you're curving it one way or the other or if the wind's blowing pretty hard from one way.

It's okay. I mean, I think I didn't do a great job of committing to -- I think I was a little worried about it running into a pot bunker or running -- so I wasn't very committed to the swing, and I would miss it. Then I would be a lot shorter and in the rough, and you might as well just swing at it. I'm sure it wouldn't have reached, but you just have that feeling on links golf that, if you hit it too good, it's going to go into the bunker. Just something to work on, but yeah, all good.

Q. You used a lot of irons off the tee. Was that always going to be a plan for you going into this week?

MIN WOO LEE: Yeah, you can hit a few drivers. Ben hit a few more drivers, but still it paid off a couple times but not like that much. It's just one of those where how comfortable you feel too. We're playing in a major, in an Open, and it feels like a major. You're playing at 9:00, and the whole fairway is full and the 1st hole is a coliseum kind of feel.

There's obviously nerves involved in that, and you've got to do what you're comfortable with too. If that is, especially on links golf, if you're 30 behind where you normally would hit it, that's not that bad. Having a poor swing into the pot bunker is just a penalty.

Yeah, there's a lot of feel and touch that needs to be involved too.

Q. Are you pretty flexible with that as well? Like are you going to go to the option of using a driver if you think it's kind of a lot?

MIN WOO LEE: Yeah, there's times when it is the right play and you go -- obviously you're going to do it on a par-5 or -- I mean, I only did it on one par-5, and the other ones, you can't really take it on as much with the left-to-right wind.

You're definitely flexible. You can't just be too stubborn about one thing. The wind was -- there's a few holes out there that the wind was switching, and we didn't really know if it was like a northeast to a north, and it went south for a little bit too. That's a pretty big change within a few holes.

Q. Travis Smyth was in here before, and he said he basically felt like he was shitting himself before. Do you still feel that before a major, or does that go away?

MIN WOO LEE: Yeah, I think I'm getting a lot more comfortable. I think just the more experience you have -- because, I mean, there are definitely nerves. Like there's not many golf courses that have -- or tournaments that have that coliseum feel on a few of those tee boxes. Maybe not proving myself, but I did that early on.

It's -- yeah, you've got to get out of it. Maybe being more aggressive and you need that mindset or you need a chill mindset. It's kind of in between. You need to have one or the other, I think.

Q. Walking a few holes today it seemed like you were waiting a long period of time for a certain amount of shots. I think the round was 5 hours, 40, or something like that. What did you make of the pace today? I know it was tough conditions, but what did you make of the pace?

MIN WOO LEE: I think it just depends on groups in front of us. It was a little slow, but you get that. There's lots of rulings and stuff if you don't hit it as good as you want to, but it is what it is.

Q. What made you think to change your putting?

MIN WOO LEE: Sorry, if you were here three minutes ago, I would have answered that. Just got to a point where it wasn't consistent enough. I would be streaky on and off, and I would be nervous on a three, four-footer, but stats-wise I'm actually not bad at short putting, but in my head, I feel like I'm going to miss the putt.

So there was something physical and mentally that wasn't right, and I just needed a change, some sort of a change to get me out of that funk. It's great. It's nice to hit putts. Still a little nervous, but hit putts and go in the middle.

Yeah, I just didn't think I had a great putting stroke under pressure.

Q. What was the first tournament you switched at?

MIN WOO LEE: Travelers. So I only had two tournaments with it, but yeah, just Travelers was more of a tweaking, kind of like I did it but I had to put a putting stroke in there type of thing and try to learn off it.

Then Scottish Open, I putted really well. It's good. Really good so far.

Q. A long, hot day, as we've said. What's the afternoon look like?

MIN WOO LEE: Just normal. Obviously you need to chill, but I'll go to the gym and lift some weights. Yeah, just a normal week.