ATLANTA – The Chef was cooking on Thursday at the Tour Championship.
In his tournament debut at East Lake Golf Club, Min Woo Lee had a winning recipe to the tune of an 8-under par 62 to grab the lead by two strokes at the FedEx Cup final and tie his career low on the PGA Tour.
Funny enough, Lee was discouraged with his iron play after two middling results in the first two legs of the playoffs but still advanced to the 30-man finale. He called his iron play the worst of the season.
“It was probably the saddest I've been on the golf course, which is not good. We're really lucky to be out here and play some good golf to get into the playoffs. It just felt so hard,” he said. “It just got to a point where I was looking at what's in the bags of everyone
else and trying to find out what to do and ended up changing shafts before the week, on the Tuesday.”
Figuring there wasn’t much to lose and with the Presidents Cup looming next month, the 28-year-old Aussie conducted a blind test of three different shafts and settled on the True Temper Dynamic Gold S-400, a heavier shaft that helped him show his swing down a bit.
That was a suggestion from Lee’s coach back home, who wondered, “Why are you swinging it so fast?”
It worked. Lee ranked second in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green and it didn’t hurt that he made 132 feet of putts en route to an eight-birdie, bogey-free performance.
Lee was paired with J.J. Spaun, who withdrew with a right shoulder injury while playing his sixth hole. Lee called it “unsettling” initially but he found his rhythm and maintained a good pace of play while carding back-to-back birdies three times.
All it took was a better attitude, seeing a few putts drop and a change in shafts in his irons to move into the driver seat after one round in the chase for two trophies and $10 million to the winner.
“I just needed a change, and it was great. Everything that I tried to do, it was like where was this the last few months?” he said. “It was a gamble, but glad it worked out.”
Adam Schupak is a senior writer for Golfweek, covering the PGA Tour.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Min Woo Lee fires career-low 62 in first round of 2026 Tour Championship
