Water was just as important as birdies for Minjee Lee, who pushed through 35C on the opening day of the Women\u2019s PGA Championship outside Dallas to finish second on the leaderboard as the Australian star chases down a record purse and a third major championship. <\/p>\n
A massive $3.7m is on offer to the winner at Fields Ranch East and despite being a local now, having made Dallas her US base, Lee said the trying conditions, with more heat forecast, would take a toll. <\/p>\n
Lee bogeyed her opening hole and two of her final three holes to give up the outright lead, having peeled off seven birdies, and another bogey, in between to card an opening round three-under 69, which left her one shot adrift of Thailand\u2019s Jeeno Thitkul. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just kept telling my caddie, can you give me another water, can you give me another water?\u201d Lee said after her round. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we could have enough out there. It\u2019s really hot. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the same for everyone. I mean, if it\u2019s tough for me it\u2019s going be tough for pretty much the whole field. Just try and use my umbrella to shade the sun and the more wind we have.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t get ahead of yourself, especially in this kind of weather. I think it\u2019s more just the heat that\u2019s draining your focus, so it\u2019s going to be a big factor.\u201d <\/p>\n
Lee was one of the few in the field to have played the course before it was set up for the PGA Championship and said it had been made tougher, as a major should, thankful she had help finding some of her errant tee shots. <\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, it\u2019s different. The rough is much thicker,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you hit it just off the fairways you can … I mean, I\u2019m thankful for the volunteers because I couldn\u2019t find my ball some of the times.<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty much you can only see maybe a third of the ball, just the top, so when I came to practise it was a little bit more dormant, so the rough hadn\u2019t quite come in yet. I think that\u2019s the big difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe greens are a little bit quicker and it\u2019s just in tournament … it\u2019s set up for tournament play now and before it was just the members could still play and we could play, so it was not the same at all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Water was just as important as birdies for Minjee Lee, who pushed through 35C on the opening day…","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_volume":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3149,2920,4955,1853,4959,4956,4961,3638,4960,4963,4958,3120,3136,4957,4962,623,624,879,3144],"class_list":["post-7338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-america","tag-asia","tag-australian-star-chases","tag-dallas","tag-errant-tee-shots","tag-final-day","tag-heat-forecast","tag-lee","tag-lee-bogeyed","tag-mikey-paterson","tag-newswire-sport","tag-north-america","tag-northern-america","tag-record-purse","tag-south-eastern-asia","tag-texas","tag-texas-golf","tag-thailand","tag-united-states-of-america","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@fogolf\/117338151639740449","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}