Minjee Lee has joined Australia’s all-time golf greats as a major multiple champion with a landslide victory at the U.S. Women’s Open in North Carolina.
Lee turned a three-run lead in the third round into a four-shot win at the Pine Needles Country Club to pocket a $ 1.8 million ($ 2.5 million) check.
The 26-year-old finished 13th below the tournament parity after closing out on Sunday with a 71.
Lee is the third Australian to win the U.S. Women’s Open, the most important women’s golf event, after Karrie Webb (2000 and 2001) and Jan Stephenson.
The Perth star’s dominant victory follows her great revolutionary at the Evian Championship last July and is set to catapult Lee from fourth to No. 2 in the world.
The win also lifted Lee into a company esteemed as the only Australian golfer to catch multiple majors.
Webb, with seven major leagues, Stephenson (three) and big men Peter Thomson (five), Greg Norman (two) and David Graham (two) are the only Australians to have won more than one.
After starting the final round of three clearings, Lee closed the door of the group of pursuers with consecutive birds in the first two holes to load five clearings.
At the time, the world number 4 made bogeys in the fifth and seventh holes, but still reached the corner where he had started at 13 below parity, while his American teammate Mina Harigae had dropped once to fall four behind.
Lee turned the back nine into a procession as his challengers fell, with Harigae (72) finishing runner-up.
Lee’s next goal will be the British Women’s Open next month, which is already the leader in the average scoring of the 2022 LPGA Tour and has won in its last two rounds.
Maybe she could replace Korean Jin Young Ko as the world number one if she wins the last women’s competition of the year in Muirfield.