By Daniel Rapaport
Matthew Wolff, K.H. Lee and Danny Lee have withdrawn from the Open Championship, which begins Thursday at Royal St. George’s. They will be replaced in the field by Andy Sullivan, Antoine Rozner and Troy Merritt.

K.H. Lee, who won his first PGA Tour event at the AT&T Byron Nelson in May, will miss the year’s final major due to the birth of his child. An injury will keep Danny Lee out of the field.

Wolff, however, did not provide a reason for his withdrawal. The 22-year-old world No. 35 did not play between the Masters and the U.S. Open as he took time away from the game to focus on his mental health.

“I just—I think the biggest thing right now that I’m trying to do is enjoy myself again and just take care of myself really,” Wolff said at Torrey Pines, where he finished T-15. “I love these fans and I want to play well for them, but right now I’m just really trying to be happy and I, like I said, I live a great life and I want to enjoy it.”

He played in each of the following two weeks, missing the cut at the Travelers Championship and finishing T-58 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

Wolff is now the fourth healthy top-50 player who will not be in the field at Royal St. George’s. Sungjae Im and Si-Woo Kim opted to skip to focus on the Olympic tournament, where a medal would exempt both from mandatory Korean military service. Kevin Na will not make the trip after due to “travel restrictions.”

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By Dave Shedloski
K.H. Lee’s breakthrough victory Sunday in the AT&T Byron Nelson might not carry the emotional weight of the long-sought win Richard Bland registered Saturday on the European Tour—one that reverberated through the professional ranks here and abroad. Yet it’s doubtful being second fiddle in this instance mattered one iota.

A win, whenever it comes, is a welcome blessing.

In his 80th PGA Tour start, fighting nerves, elements and a hot golfer appropriately named Burns, Lee was a picture of composure when he birdied his final two holes to beat Louisiana native Sam Burns by three strokes in a shootout in McKinney, Texas. After a weather delay of 2 hours, 23 minutes, Lee finished off a six-under 66 at TPC Craig Ranch and grabbed the final qualifying spot in this week’s PGA Championship at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island.

When he tapped in from inches away on the 72nd hole, Lee hugged his caddie, Brett Waldman, a secret weapon of sorts who had finished T-14 at the second stage of PGA Tour qualifying at TPC Craig Ranch in 2010. Then he was greeted by his wife, Joo Yeon Yu, who is expecting the couple’s first child in July. Finally, he accepted a congratulatory embrace from countryman K.J. Choi. As he approached the tour’s most successful Korean player, Lee bowed twice.

But he bowed to no one else on a day marred by heavy rains.

“Long time for me to wait for the win,” said Lee, 29, who previously had posted victories in Japan and South Korea before joining the PGA Tour in 2019. “Very hard conditions for everybody today. I tried [to stay] patient and keep playing positive. Still can’t believe now what happened.”

Beginning the day one stroke behind Burns, who had broken through for his own maiden victory in his previous start at the Valspar Championship two weeks ago, Lee birdied four of his first six holes to seize control. He then maintained his composure amid worsening weather conditions that had been expected, prompting tee times to be moved forward for an early finish.

It wasn’t early enough. Lightning forced suspension of play at 1:52 p.m. CDT, leaving Lee and eight others remaining to complete the tournament.

When play resumed at 4:15 p.m. local time, Lee faced a 15-foot par putt on the 16th hole. He left it short for only his second bogey of the week, and his lead slipped to two strokes over Burns. Never was a bounce-back more important.

Matthew Stockman
K.H. Lee handled the rain conditions—not to mention the nearly 2 1/2 hour delay—by posting a six-under 66 to win by three shots.

Instead, Lee, whose given name is Kyoung-Hoon, executed a pounce back.

With rain starting up again, Lee steered a pitching wedge from 130 yards to within four feet left of the cup, well inside Burns’ tee shot that checked up 14 feet away. Burns didn’t get his putt to the hole. Lee, ranked 137th in the world to start the week, then calmly popped his in. His two-putt birdie at the last completed a 25-under 263 total on a course that didn’t put up much resistance in its debut as host of the Dallas-area event.

“Yes, very important shot at 17,” Lee said, doing his best to answer all the interview questions in English, in itself a winning move for his efforts. “When I play 16 make bogey and maybe feels like little lose momentum some, but I tried [to be] more aggressive on 17, 18. And good shot on 17, so more make good momentum and good finish.”

“He played awesome,” Burns said of Lee. “I was really proud of him. When it was tough, he hung in there and he got off to a great start. It was kind of gettable in the beginning. Got off to a really fast start, and then kind of midway through got tough for everybody, and he kept hitting one shot after the next and never gave anybody a chance.”

The difference this week for Lee, whose only other top-10 this season was a T-2 finish at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, was his work on the greens. He put a new Callaway putter in the bag, not a bad idea when you rank 178th in strokes gained/putting. The improvement was significant; he was ninth for the week in putting at 1.127 strokes. That complemented his ball-striking, as he ranked second in approach and tee to green.

Lee lives in Lake Nona, Fla., and is the eighth native of South Korea to win on the PGA Tour. Together with Sung Kang’s win in the 2019 edition (the 2020 event was canceled due to the pandemic), it marks the first time that Korean-born players captured the same event consecutively.

Kang also waited behind the green as Lee was finishing up. It meant a lot to the new champion.

“I’m really thankful very much to K.J. and Sung Kang,” he said. “I didn’t think about they wait for me, but he [K.J.] wait for me and [say] ‘Congratulations K.H., you’re so good.’ Always they are very kind for me.”

The fifth man to win his first tour title this season, Lee rides considerable momentum into the PGA Championship, at which he will make his debut, playing in just his third career major.

“Still, I can’t believe now,” he said with a smile. “After this time, more believe in me and more strong my mind. So, I think perfect for me.”

In that regard, his timing was just right.

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By Alex Myers
The PGA Tour became the SqueeGeeA Tour on Sunday at the AT&T Byron Nelson. Excuse us for the bad joke. It was a long day. And if we’re being honest, not a particularly exciting one, either. That is, unless you’re K.H. Lee or his family.

In that case, this was probably the most exciting day of your life. So congrats. He played awesome. And he seemed impervious to the pouring rain that fell most of the afternoon at TPC Craig Ranch. If there was a strokes gained/ precipitation metric, he might just lead the tour.

No, but really. This wasn’t much of a contest. For most fans, this sight was the most entertaining part of a final round that started early and ended, well, at the normal time:

The grounds crew @ATTByronNelson is working overtime to get the finishing holes in. ? pic.twitter.com/CYodx0vuuk

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) May 16, 2021

What a wild scene that caused plenty of “championship level” jokes in the wake of the NCAA canceling a women’s golf regional earlier in the week. But all that hard work wound up not even mattering as moments later lightning in the area caused a suspension of play. When golf resumed more than two hours later, Lee, who had seized a comfortable lead after birdieing five of his first eight holes on Sunday, missed a par putt that gave Sam Burns hope.

But the 29-year-old South Korean stuffed a pitching wedge to four feet on the par-3 17th and converted the putt to regain his three-shot cushion. A two-putt birdie on No. 18 kept that margin and gave him his first career PGA Tour title and made him the last man to earn a spot into next week’s PGA Championship.

“Long day for me, I think everybody,” Lee told reporters after. “I mean, but I just try keep patient and positive thinking. So I don’t want to looking on the leaderboard, so just try my golf, and then successful now, so I’m very excited and happy.”

Here are four other takeaways from the final round at TPC Craig Ranch.

K.H. Lee had a secret weapon
OK, so a caddie isn’t so secret, but Lee’s looper, Brett Waldman, may have contributed more to this victory—and to Lee’s scorching 25 under total—than you may have realized. You see, Waldman is an accomplished golfer himself, and he once made it through the second stage of PGA Tour Q School, finishing T-14 in 2010. The venue that year? You guessed it, TPC Craig Ranch.

Matthew Stockman

So, yeah, you could say Waldman knows his way around this place. And during a year in which so few players did, that proved to be especially important.

Sam Burns can’t win every week …
… even if it seems like he’s the 54-hole leader every week. The rising star played his way into that position for an incredible fourth time this season, but Burns wasn’t able to go back-to-back after winning his maiden PGA Tour title at the Valspar in his last start two weeks ago.

Matthew Stockman

Still, a solo second gave the 24-year-old three straight top-five finishes and moved him to fifth in the FedEx Cup standings. This dude is the real deal.

The Schwartzel Redemption continues
We are now more than a decade out from Charl Schwartzel’s 2011 Masters victory, but the South African is playing some of his best golf since then. And it’s kind of come out of nowhere. Schwartzel had fallen to No. 211 in the World Ranking entering last month’s Masters, but a T-26 was the start of a nice run.

Matthew Stockman

He teamed with Louis Oosthuizen to finish runner-up at the Zurich Classic in his next start, then went T-21 (Valspar), T-14 (Wells Fargo) and a T-3 this week despite curiously not wearing his trademark big straw hat in the rain. He’s not going to be one of the favourites at the PGA Championship next week, but at 200-to-1 odds, you could do a lot worse than the 36-year-old who made the cut at Kiawah in 2012. Speaking of guys who are going to be getting a lot of betting support at Kiawah …

Jordan Spieth stalled—for now
Spieth entered the final round with a great chance to win his hometown PGA Tour event for the first time, but at even through 13 holes, he never seriously contended. After, he admitted the rain got to him.

“Today was a little disappointing,” Spieth said. “Just was tough. What a battle. We don’t normally get rain in Texas without electricity very often, and so that was definitely a test. But it was fun. I thought the tournament was great out here, and after having a month off just kind of coming out and hitting a lot of good shots, picking back up where I left off, was a big confidence boost.”

Matthew Stockman

Jordan Spieth, NOT a mudder. Noted. Still, as he noted the T-9 wasn’t all bad considering it was his first start since the Masters after contracting COVID-19 last month. It also turned out to be Spieth’s best finish in 10 starts at the AT&T Byron Nelson as he finally topped that T-16 he recorded as a 16-year-old high schooler in 2010.

Next up, the PGA Championship, where a win would make him go to the head of the class in a different way as he’d become just the sixth player to complete the career Grand Slam, joining Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, and Gene Sarazen. With the way he’s been playing, you have to like his chances. Although, after today, we’d like his chances even more if the Ocean Course stays dry.

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Despite all this, K.H. Lee was able to steady his nerves, keep dry enough and stay focused despite a late weather delay to shoot a closing 66, passing 54-hole leader Sam Burns and winning his first PGA Tour title at the AT&T Byron Nelson by three shots.

The win came just in time for the 29-year-old from South Korea, in his third full season on the PGA Tour and making his 80th career tour start. Lee had been third on the alternate list for next week’s PGA Championship. But the victory allowed him to grab the final spot into the official field at the Ocean Course, with PGA Tour winners being exempt into the major.

Tee times were moved up on Sunday at TPC Craig Ranch with a pending forecast that included showers and lightning. The final threesome had almost completed 16 holes when the electricity arrived, nine players needing to wait roughly 2 1/2 hours to wrap up the final round.

Lee, playing with Burns and Charl Schwartzel in the final threesome, managed to take advantage of soft conditions at TPC Craig Ranch before the rain started to come down more steadily. He birdied three of his first four holes to jump past Burns and made the turn four-under 32. He then played the back nine in a steady one-under 35, a bogey on the 16th hole after play resumed offset by a birdie on the 17th and one more on the 18th.

As for Burns, finishing second was a disappointment. This was the fourth tournament in the 2020-21 season that the 24-year-old had either led outright or held a share of the lead entering the final round, the most of any player on tour. He failed to win the first two times, but closed the deal two weeks ago at the Valspar Championship to grab his first PGA Tour win. The assumption was that getting win No. 1 would make subsequent wins a little easier, and that might still be the case, but Burns struggled early, bogeying his first and fourth holes to see Lee quickly pass him. Burns finished with a 70.

For his effort, Lee grabbed a prize money payout of $1.458 million (his biggest check on the PGA Tour previously was $649,700 for his T-2 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February). The overall prize money payout at TPC Craig Ranch was $8.1 million.

Here’s the prize money payout for each golfer at TPC Craig Ranch. Come back shortly after the tournament and we’ll update the prize money payout for each golfer.

Win: K.H. Lee, -25, $1,458,000

2: Sam Burns, -22, $882,900

T-3: Patton Kizzire, -21, $395,381.25

T-3: Daniel Berger, -21, $395,381.25

T-3: Scott Stallings, -21, $395,381.25

T-3: Charl Schwartzel, -21, $395,381.25

T-7: Troy Merritt, -19, $263,250

T-7: Joseph Bramlett, -19, $263,250

T-9: Seamus Power, -18, $212,625

T-9: Jhonattan Vegas, -18, $212,625

T-9: Doc Redman, -18, $212,625

T-9: Jordan Spieth, -18, $212,625

T-13: Luke Donald, -17, $153,900

T-13: Satoshi Kodaira -17, $153,900

T-13: Harris English, -17, $153,900

T-13: Bronson Burgoon, -17, $153,900

T-17: Will Zalatoris, -16, $119,475

T-17: Hank Lebioda, -16, $119,475

T-17: Brandt Snedeker, -16, $119,475

T-17: Matt Kuchar, -16, $119,475

T-21: Lee Westwood, -15, $84,969

T-21: Carlos Ortiz, -15, $84,969

T-21: Marc Leishman, -15, $84,969

T-21: Rafa Cabrera Bello, -15, $84,969

T-21: Alex Noren, -15, $84,969

T-26: Wesley Bryan, -14, $56,700

T-26: Rob Oppenheim, -14, $56,700

T-26: Ryan Armour, -14, $56,700

T-26: Sepp Straka, -14, $56,700

T-26: Vincent Whaley, -14, $56,700

T-26: Rory Sabbatini, -14, $56,700

T-26: Keith Mitchell, -14, $56,700

T-26: Ben Martin, -14, $56,700

T-34: Jon Rahm, -13, $42,201

T-34: Mark Hubbard, -13, $42,201

T-34: Roger Sloan, -13, $42,201

T-34: Scott Brown, -13, $42,201

T-34: Adam Schenk, -13, $42,201

T-39: Talor Gooch, -12, $31,185

T-39: Brian Stuard, -12, $31,185

T-39: Johnson Wagner, -12, $31,185

T-39: Hideki Matsuyama, -12, $31,185

T-39: Pat Perez, -12, $31,185

T-39: Russell Knox, -12, $31,185

T-39: Wyndham Clark, -12, $31,185

T-39: Sean O’Hair, -12, $31,185

T-47: J.J Spaun, -11, $20,958.75

T-47: Scottie Scheffler, -11, $20,958.75

T-47: Patrick Rodgers, -11, $20,958.75

T-47: Ryan Palmer, -11, $20,958.75

T-47: Sung Kang, -11, $20,958.75

T-47: Michael Gligic, -11, $20,958.75

T-47: Nelson Ledesma, -11, $20,958.75

T-47: Brice Garnett, -11, $20,958.75

T-55: Si Woo Kim, -10, $18,630

T-55: Aaron Wise, -10, $18,630

T-55: Charles Howell III, -10, $18,630

T-55: Sebastian Munoz, -10, $18,630

T-55: Cameron Champ, -10, $18,630

T-55: Bryson DeChambeau, -10, $18,630

T-61: Mark Anderson, -9, $17,820

T-61: Wes Roach, -9, $17,820

T-61: Martin Laird, -9, $17,820

T-61: Luke List, -9, $17,820

65: Michael Gellerman, -8, $17,415

66: Bo Hoag, -7, $17,253

67: Michael Kim, -6, $17,091

T-68: Ted Potter Jr., -5, $16,848

T-68: Dylan Meyer, -5, $16,848

70: Cameron Percy, -3, $16,605

T-71: D.J. Trahan, -1, $16,361

T-71: Austin Cook, -1, $16,361

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