Min Woo Lee’s Breakthrough: The Shot That Cemented a Future Star
Guided by a devoted family and tight‑knit team, Min Woo Lee’s rise signals the beginning of a bright new chapter for one of golf’s most dynamic young stars.
It was the final hole of the 2025 Houston Open, and Lee was chasing his first PGA Tour win. He’d entered the final day with a four-shot lead but had just dunked his tee shot into a pond at the 16th hole. Scottie Scheffler, the highest-ranked player in the world, was now lurking one shot behind.
Lee lined up for a treacherous 55-foot putt and, trusting his feel, hit a shot that caught the fringe, rode the slope, and stopped eight inches from the cup — a gutsy stroke that showcased the touch and nerve that makes him one of golf's most promising young talents.
What happened next showed why he's become a cult hero for the TikTok generation: before making a simple maneuver, he crouched behind the ball and held up his fingers to "read" the green, mimicking the technique pros use to calculate break on difficult putts. Even Scheffler, watching from the scorer's area, burst out laughing.
It was pure theater—a player who had just faced the most pressure-packed moment of his career was reminding everyone that golf is also supposed to be fun. Then Lee tapped in for his breakthrough victory.
The win validated what the golf world has sensed for years: Min Woo Lee has the talent to be a championship golfer and the charisma to become something even bigger. At 27, he's already ranked inside the world’s top 50, collected three European Tour titles, and amassed over a million followers across Instagram and TikTok and a catchphrase “Let him cook" that has spawned its own subculture.
Min Woo Lee with his sister Minjee acting as his caddie.
As Min Woo became more competitive and serious about the sport, he found himself channeling both of his parents to find success.
Photo credit:
Family archives.
A Family Affair
Lee grew up in Perth, the son of Korean immigrants. His mother Clara played professionally on the Korean tour before becoming a teaching pro in Australia. His father Soonam was a serious amateur. His sister Minjee would become a three-time major champion. Golf wasn't a hobby — it was the family trade.
But Min Woo resisted.
While Minjee was exceedingly diligent about practice, hitting ball after ball on the range, Min Woo would wander off to organize chipping contests with friends. "I just found that a bit boring," he says, of the repetitive grind. "So, I'll do more of the fun stuff, trying to make it as fun as possible."
Min Woo preferred sports with immediacy. "Swimming, soccer, basketball, and I did a bit of taekwondo—a very fast action sport," he says. "Golf is obviously not that, so I didn't really love it when I was young. I was always good at it. I was very talented. I just didn't love it."
What ultimately hooked him wasn't the game itself. It was the people around the game. It was connection — not competition: The relationships he built on the course became the foundation of how he approaches the game to this day. “Just meeting people from different countries—that's what really made me love the sport," he recalls.
As Min Woo became more competitive and serious about the sport, he found himself channeling both of his parents to find success. Clara and Soonam Lee emigrated from South Korea to Australia in the early 1990s. When Clara became a teaching pro in Perth, Min Woo and Minjee would follow her to lessons—that's how they first picked up the game.
Growing up with his mother as his coach wasn't always easy. "I didn't really listen to her because that's what young boys do," he says. "But I also did listen to her—I just didn't want to show it. Just being a little rascal like that."
His father offered a lighter touch. "Dad always sees the funny side of stuff, and that's who I am," Lee says. "I joke a lot. Dad jokes a lot. Gives granddad jokes a lot." The dynamic worked. "A lot of serious time, a lot of fun," he says. "They kind of balanced one another out."
Minjee blazed the trail for her younger brother. Two years older than Min Woo, she won the U.S. Girls' Junior in 2012 and turned pro two years later. The victories kept coming—eleven LPGA titles, three major championships, including the 2022 U.S. Women's Open and the 2025 Women's PGA Championship. Min Woo followed her path by winning the U.S. Junior Amateur in 2016—making them the only brother-sister pair to claim USGA junior titles.
Min Woo Lee and his sister Minjee.
Min Woo Lee Archives.
Let Him Cook
Lee himself affectionately calls his sister "a robot" for her consistency on the golf course. Min Woo is, by contrast, a showman — both on the fairways and off. When he’s not cracking jokes on the course, he’s posting gaming clips, joking with fans, and showing off his life beyond the course. He spends his days off playing Call of Duty with friends. "I'm a gamer," he says. "There's a competitive side, but then there's the social side of it, which is what I like."
Lee was on the golf course when he picked up what would become his signature catchphrase. After one of his booming tee shots, fans in the gallery shouted, "Let him cook!" — slang for stepping back and letting someone do their thing.
Lee loved it, started dropping it into his social media posts, and then, as he says, "It just blew up." The phrase took on a life of its own, becoming a rallying cry that connected Lee to a younger, more digitally native fanbase that golf has sometimes struggled to reach. By the time he won the Australian PGA Championship in 2023, fans were showing up in chef hats. Lee grabbed one himself on the 17th green and led a chant with the crowd before closing out victory.
The persona comes with expectations. "There's a little bit of pressure, I guess," he admits. "You've got to play good golf because you have this saying, or this mantra. 'Let him cook' is like, he's playing well, let him do his thing. If you don't do that, it's not good."
But Lee sees it as authentic, not performance. "I never wanted to just be golf," he says. "I still need that kid in me. So why not make it a little bit more fun and not make golf so buttoned up. I'm a little bit more casual, a little bit more laid back—just showing who I am."
The approach is resonating. Lee has amassed more than 900,000 Instagram followers and 300,000 on TikTok—numbers that dwarf most of his peers on Tour. When Lululemon staged a marketing stunt at the Phoenix Open, hundreds of fans showed up in chef hats to cheer him on.
The brand isn't just a persona anymore. It's a platform.
In Good Company
Golf is an individual sport, but Lee never operates alone. His success is built on a tight circle of people he trusts—a team whose influence shows up in every round he plays.
Ritchie Smith has coached Lee since he was 14. "He puts people first, which is a big part of my sister's and my success," Lee says. As players tend toward emotional swings, Smith provides ballast—steady, analytical, focused on the long game. "Some people just have a coach as their coach and don't even talk about their families,” says Lee. “But Ritchie has mentored me in both golf and in life. He’s one of the influential people in my life."
His relationship with his caddie, Shane Joel, is just as critical—not just for having the right club in hand at the right moment but for managing the psychological grind that comes with the sport.
Joel serves as strategist, sounding board, and emotional anchor, reading not just the course but Lee's energy and mindset over the course of a five-hour round. "We're together more than our girlfriends and partners," Lee says. "We're on the golf course for five hours at least, and then maybe a couple hours beforehand. That's a long time to be with someone. So you need to have some talk about not just golf."
That trust is what separates a good caddie-player relationship from a great one. "If I need something, he'll be there for me," Lee says.
Lee has found another kind of team in TGL, the tech-forward golf league launched by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. He plays for The Bay Golf Club, a squad co-owned by NBA star Steph Curry. The format suits him: small teams, arena crowds, microphones on every player. "It was an opportunity to showcase kind of who I was a bit more," Lee says. He says the real appeal wasn't the microphones — it was having teammates. "I love being a part of it,” he says. “Just having that banter and we all kind of get along is a key to a lot of teams. You need to have a team that can have that camaraderie, which is a big part of success."
The dream that still wakes him up at odd hours is winning on arguably golf’s biggest stage: The Masters in Augusta, Ga. Lee grew up watching the storied event from Perth in the middle of the night. “It was a big part of childhood," he says. “It’s one tournament that I would always want to play — and always want to win.” The course fits his personality. “There’s a lot of holes that are very tough,” he says, “but there are a lot where you can have fun and there’s a lot of imagination that goes into it. And that’s part of my game.”
After his win at the Houston Open, people asked Lee if he might jump to LIV Golf, the rival circuit that has lured dozens of PGA Tour players. Lee responded in a way that only he could: with a meme. He posted an edited clip of a speech from The Wolf of Wall Street, his face superimposed over Leonardo DiCaprio's, ending with a line he's becoming known for: "The show goes on."
