‘A mile wrong by a mile’ at the BMW Championship

On the closing day of August 29, Lee reached round 6 after 17 holes. On the par4 18 hole, he needs to keep par to guarantee his ticket to the Tour Championship – the event for the top 30 FedEx Cup scoreboards for the 2020-2021 PGA Tour full-season championship. The prize fund for this race reached 60 million USD, of which 15 million USD went to the first place competitor.

But on the last hole of the BMW Championship, Lee caught a technical error on the second shot from the fairway.

The iron face is off-center, so the ball skews to the right, lands near the artificial creek in front of the green, and then hits the stands. This area is a fixed obstacle, so Lee is allowed to drop the ball in a new position and free from penalty. This place is 22.5 meters from the hole.

Even so, he made it only halfway on the third shot, added a 1.2-meter chip and then one putt was done. With a bogey at the end of the round, Lee finished T12 with a score of -17, received $ 199,500 and ranked 31st in the FedEx Cup table.

If he keeps par that hole, Lee goes to T9, receives $ 256,500 and enters the top 30. Reaching this milestone, he also has the whole four major next season including the Masters, PGA championship, US Open and Open Championship. Particularly for the first major, Lee won the spot thanks to the Byron Nelson title in May – the first title after 80 attempts on the PGA Tour.

In contrast to Lee, Erik van Rooyen and Sergio Garcia won the right to the Tour Championship at the last hole of the BMW Championship. Rooyen scored a birdie and Garcia kept par from a hole-hugging phase in a bunker escape on the left side of the green.

Lee was born in 1991, has been playing professionally since 2010. He and his colleague Sung Kang were exempted from the military service in Korea thanks to their Asian gold achievements.

Quoc Huy