One For The Money

By Max Adler
Photo by Mark Rogers April 6, 2009

At LAX airport the pilot comes on the intercom and tells you, in that prototypical cocksure twang that must be a requisite to graduate flight school nowadays, that "our travel time to Auckland, New Zealand will be 13 hours and six minutes. We'll be cruising at about, oh, 38,000 feet. Sit back, relax, watch a few movies, enjoy the meal services and by the way, the current weather conditions there are sunny and mild." Gone are the days of aviation when hurtling a metal shell 6,508 miles across the Pacific Ocean was an event of any significance. They've got this down to the minute.

A similar attitude of nonchalance surrounds Danny Lee's imminent transition to the professional ranks. The Korean-born, New Zealand-raised 18-year-old has already tasted so much: global travel schedules, unrelenting media attention, huge galleries, even a win over independent contractors at the European Tour's Johnnie Walker Classic. This spring when he makes the more-than-13-hour trip in the other direction (with no return ticket booked) to play in his first Masters and then turn pro the next week, is there anything he won't be ready for?

"The only difference is going to be that if I play well, I get money," says Lee. "If I don't play well, then it's just golf."

Lee is one of the rare players who hits it dead straight—zero draw, zero fade. His swing influence is Tiger Woods, who he supplanted last year as the youngest winner of the U.S. Amateur. While he idolizes Woods for making so few mistakes, his other hero is Adam Scott, because "he dress nice."

After Augusta Lee will ink a lucrative equipment contract (Callaway is the front-runner), unpack his flashy wardrobe wherever his parents decide to buy a house, then set about earning a PGA Tour card by getting sponsor's exemptions into as many events as he can (he has already locked up two: the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and the Quail Hollow Championship). The list of names that has circumvented Q school via this full-court press in recent memory is short and elite—Woods, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Justin Leonard, Charles Howell III, Matt Kuchar and Ryan Moore. Yet it doesn't faze the teenager that by setting his sights squarely on the PGA Tour he boldly renders void the two-year spot on the European Tour earned by winning the Johnnie Walker. He's not worried about going to Q school if he ends up there.

"Danny's not arrogant. It's just that he has this tremendous belief in himself," says Ken Allen, who as a manager of club teams at Springfield GC in Rotorua, N.Z., has witnessed "the skinny little [runt]" lay down whippings on grown men since age 12. When Lee was just 14, playing in the fourth spot of four in the nation's inter-club championships, he shot a course record 65 (seven under) at Maraenui GC to help secure a third-straight title for his home club.

"Always been real loyal," adds Allen. "He'd get back from a tournament in America on a Saturday night and then show up early Sunday morning for a club match. Most pros don't have the travel schedule Danny already puts on himself."

Lee wouldn't have weighed much more than 100 pounds at age 14. Accurate iron play, not distance, is how he scores. If anything, he needs to learn to hit the driver a little lower. He still hasn't filled out, but his relatively large hands and feet hint that more strength (and length) is on the way.

Pulling into the parking lot of Springfield GC, there is nothing to suggest a world-class player would blossom there. Men in jeans and untucked shirts are sitting on car fenders changing their shoes. Of the holes in view it isn't clear where the fairway ends and the rough begins. The clubhouse resembles a middle-school building that hasn't been updated since the '70s, and the rectangular tables inside are arranged in long cafeteria-style rows. Green fees are $60 Kiwi, which is $34 U.S. A strong player will hit a short iron or wedge into all of the par 4s, and the greens require a pretty firm rap.

But despite appearances, the club has a knack for producing oodles of scratch or better golfers. Maybe the tight tree-lined "fairways" breed driving nerves or maybe the short 6,167-yard layout gets players psychologically comfortable scoring low. Or maybe it is the unlikely conjunction of two cultures at the club, Korean and Kiwi, which has raised a player as special as Lee.

Jin-Myung Lee received his Catholic name when the song "Oh, Danny Boy" struck a special chord in the heart of his father, Sam, who owns a large badminton shuttlecock manufacturing business in Korea. His mother, So Jin Seo, is a gentle woman with a 5-handicap who gave the eldest of her three sons his first club to swing when he was 8. When Danny was 12, the family moved to Rotorua, a tourist hotspot of geothermal activity, skydiving, bungee jumping and mountain biking, in part to escape the polluted Seoul air worsening a respiratory condition of his father (which has since ameliorated). Arriving in a strange land, Danny spoke no English and there were few if any teachers at school who could help.