Min Woo Lee opened the TOUR Championship with an 8-under 62 and took the lead after 18 holes at East Lake. He did it by leaning away from the part of his game that usually defines him: speed.
That is why PGA golf today search traffic points straight to Lee. He is making his first start at East Lake, and the round gave him the kind of start that can change a week. He hit 11 fairways, used heavier shafts in his irons and looked far more controlled than the player who had to chase consistency earlier in the year.
Lee said he slowed down his swing to be a bit more accurate, a shift he described as hard because so many athletes try to keep adding power as they develop. He said his coach back home asked why he was swinging so fast, even though it did not look that way. Once he backed off a little, he said, the ball came out nicely. That matters here because in elite fields, pure speed is only useful if it stays in the fairway.
The numbers explain why the adjustment has mattered. Lee won his first TOUR event in Houston last March, but earlier in 2025 he missed three of four cuts at the majors and had only one finish inside the top 40 in Signature Event fields. In 2026, the picture changed: runner-up at Pebble Beach, tied for 12th at Riviera, tied for sixth at Bay Hill and two more top 20s later in the year. His clubhead speed still ranks 12th on TOUR this season, but that is down from fifth each of the last two years, a sign that the old formula was not enough on its own.
That is the friction at the center of Lee’s rise. His best skill is still speed, yet the round that put him on top was built on resisting it. He has shown that a little less violence can produce more score, and at East Lake that tradeoff has already turned into a lead. The question now is whether the same measured swing can carry him through the rest of the TOUR Championship and deliver the biggest win of his career.
