AUGUSTA, Ga. — Min Woo Lee broke into the top 25 in the world following his victory a couple weeks ago at the Houston Open, the long-awaited first on the PGA Tour for the big-hitting Australian who had won just about everywhere else around the world.
Jason Day thinks his fellow Aussie can climb even higher.
“It’s all up to him if he wants to get to No. 1,” said Day, who spent 51 weeks there starting in September 2015. "It’s a lifestyle change he has to understand. I know that he has the tools and the mental side to do it because he loves the moment, and that’s something you cannot teach golfers in general, to love being in that moment and under the most stress.
“If he can really enjoy that and just improve over time, he’ll be probably be our next No. 1,” Day added. "I’m going to take myself out of the conversation because that’s my goal as well. But he’s got the best chance to become No. 1 from Australia."
Greg Norman spent 331 weeks at No. 1 in the 1980s and '90s. Adam Scott spent 11 weeks there in 2014.
“I always felt like I had the assets to win, it was just can you do it mentally?” said Lee, who acknowledged that Day had helped in that regard — credit that Day in turn passed along to Karrie Webb, one of Australia's greatest players.
She had also passed along some advice to the 26-year-old Lee, who heads into this week's Masters having made the cut in two of his previous three appearances at Augusta National, including a tie for 22nd last year.
“I wanted him to hear, ‘Hey, this is what she did. This is what I did. A lot of these other guys did,’” Day explained. “When you want to be No. 1, everything has to be in order. Certain sacrifices need to happen. ... There is only a certain amount of people that can sit on that perch. It’s nice to look back and say, 'I accomplished that.'”
He comes in peace
Viktor Hovland is a naturally inquisitive fella, which comes in handy when it comes to golf. The 27-year-old from Norway likes to tinker with things, which is how he came to have a new driver in the bag for the Masters this week.
It's also how he wound up last week on the “UAP Files Podcast” — as in, unidentified anomalous phenomena.
UFOs, in common parlance. Extraterrestrials. Space aliens.
“I think it’s just interesting when you have an open mind,” Hovland said. “Even in the golf swing, you can get very dogmatic and you look at things as, ‘Oh, this has to be a truth. This has to be correct.’ And sometimes the beliefs that you hold the most deeply can obfuscate yourself. When you question things and look at things from different angles, you might get to a deeper truth."
Sure, Hovland says, there are moments when he thinks, "OK, I know this is getting into territory that's very speculative."
“But I think as long as you have an objective kind of mindset while looking into this information, I think it’s just fun,” Hovland said. “You don't have to live and die by every word you read or thing you hear.”
Masters invitations
Augusta National doesn't see a need to update its criteria to create a special category for LIV Golf players. Chairman Fred Ridley said that can be handled through special invitations, which is what Joaquin Niemann received each of the last two years.
U.S. Open and British Open organizers this year are exempting the leading player from the LIV Golf League points list.
“We feel we can deal with that issue — whether it’s a LIV player or a player on some other tour that might not otherwise be eligible for an invitation — that we can handle that with a special invitation," Ridley said.
PGA Tour winners (that offer full FedEx Cup points) get automatic invitations. The LIV Golf players who won 54-hole tournaments since last year's Masters who are not at Augusta National this week are Brendan Steele, Carlos Ortiz, Adrian Meronk and Marc Leishman, who won last week at Doral.
All eight of the PGA Tour winners in the fall, where most fields were weak because they were primarily players trying to keep their tour cards, received invitations. That list includes Kevin Yu, Rafael Campos and Matt McCarty.
Key to the Masters is keeping the field under 100 players. The field is at 95 this year.
“We will have a thorough examination of our qualifications after the tournament this year, and we may make some changes,” Ridley said. “Not necessarily that, but some years we do make changes, some years we don’t.”
He also said the Masters would study whether winners of strong European tour events, such as the BMW PGA Championship and Hero Dubai Desert Classic, should get an exemption.
Last-minute looper
Justin Thomas will have Joe Greiner on his bag this week, making the change Tuesday night after his usual caddie, Matt “Rev” Minister, hurt his back. Greiner had recently split with Max Homa, his longtime partner.
“I’m very lucky Joe Greiner is a great friend and able to help me out last minute,” Thomas said on social media.
Greiner helped Homa tie for third at Augusta National last year. But the six-time PGA Tour winner has slumped badly since, and Greiner decided it would be best to split with his childhood friend ahead of last week’s Texas Open.
“It’s hard. I’m just so used to him caddying,” said Homa, who now has Bill Harke on his bag. “It’s been hard to process, but also good in a way, because friendship does matter more than any of this stuff.”
(AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson contributed to this report.)
