Alison Lee of the United States speaks at a press conference following the first round of the BMW Ladies Championship on the LPGA Tour at Seowon Hills at Seowon Valley Country Club in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, on Oct. 19, 2023. (Yonhap)
PAJU, South Korea, Oct. 19 (Korea Bizwire) – Birdies came in bunches, and it seemed as though Alison Lee, Korean American golfer playing in the land of her parents’ birth this week, could do no wrong Thursday.
Lee collected nine birdies for a superb round of nine-under 63 to begin the BMW Ladies Championship in Paju, northwest of Seoul. Dining on Korean food played a role in Lee’s bogey-free day.
“I really like playing over here. I came to Korea a lot when I was younger. Both my parents were born in Korea,” Lee, a native of Los Angeles, said. “So it’s nice to come here, eat kimchi every day, be able to have a lot of good food and a lot of good memories.”
Lee said she was in such a good groove that the ball was going where she was aiming.
“It was a lot of fun. It almost makes me want to not stop the round and just start on the second round right now because that’s just how good I feel, no matter how tired I am,” Lee added. “It’s just one of those days where everything just kind of falls into place. I was hitting the numbers I wanted to. I was reading the greens well, which I haven’t been able to do all year.”
Alison Lee (Image provided by BMW Korea)
Lee has played in South Korea on several occasions. She tied for 10th at the BMW Ladies Championship last year on a different course and tied for ninth on another course in 2021. In 2016, when the lone South Korean tournament was played under a different sponsor, she finished as the runner-up.
The Korean tournament has long been played in October, and Lee said her game tends to come into place this time of year. She added her game is “in a really good place” at the moment.
“I’m striking the ball really well. I feel really good about my swing,” Lee, still in search of her first LPGA title at age 28, said. “Just something that’s been lacking over the last year has been the putting.”
In most tournaments, a round of 63 would have been good enough to put Lee atop the leaderboard. But after some overnight rain had softened the greens, the 6,680-yard course was there for the taking. Ashleigh Buhai of South Africa did one better than Lee with a bogey-free round of 62.
“It’s a very scorable course, as you can see on the leaderboard. Very easy to make a lot of birdies,” Lee said. “The greens are rolling very nicely. So also the greens are very big. The biggest greens I’ve ever played in my entire career. It definitely is going to play very differently day to day, depending on where the pin is.”
(Yonhap)
