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AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) โ Min Woo Lee broke into the top 25 in the world following his victory a couple weeks ago at the Houston Open, the long-awaited first on the PGA Tour for the big-hitting Australian who had won just about everywhere else around the world.
Jason Day thinks his fellow Aussie can climb even higher.
โItโs all up to him if he wants to get to No. 1,โ said Day, who spent 51 weeks there starting in September 2015. "Itโs a lifestyle change he has to understand. I know that he has the tools and the mental side to do it because he loves the moment, and thatโs something you cannot teach golfers in general, to love being in that moment and under the most stress.
โIf he can really enjoy that and just improve over time, heโll be probably be our next No. 1,โ Day added. "Iโm going to take myself out of the conversation because thatโs my goal as well. But heโs got the best chance to become No. 1 from Australia."
Greg Norman spent 331 weeks at No. 1 in the 1980s and '90s. Adam Scott spent 11 weeks there in 2014.
โI always felt like I had the assets to win, it was just can you do it mentally?โ said Lee, who acknowledged that Day had helped in that regard โ credit that Day in turn passed along to Karrie Webb, one of Australia's greatest players.
She had also passed along some advice to the 26-year-old Lee, who heads into this week's Masters having made the cut in two of his previous three appearances at Augusta National, including a tie for 22nd last year.
โI wanted him to hear, โHey, this is what she did. This is what I did. A lot of these other guys did,โโ Day explained. โWhen you want to be No. 1, everything has to be in order. Certain sacrifices need to happen. ... There is only a certain amount of people that can sit on that perch. Itโs nice to look back and say, 'I accomplished that.'โ
He comes in peace
Viktor Hovland is a naturally inquisitive fella, which comes in handy when it comes to golf. The 27-year-old from Norway likes to tinker with things, which is how he came to have a new driver in the bag for the Masters this week.
It's also how he wound up last week on the โUAP Files Podcastโ โ as in, unidentified anomalous phenomena.
UFOs, in common parlance. Extraterrestrials. Space aliens.
โI think itโs just interesting when you have an open mind,โ Hovland said. โEven in the golf swing, you can get very dogmatic and you look at things as, โOh, this has to be a truth. This has to be correct.โ And sometimes the beliefs that you hold the most deeply can obfuscate yourself. When you question things and look at things from different angles, you might get to a deeper truth."
Sure, Hovland says, there are moments when he thinks, "OK, I know this is getting into territory that's very speculative."
โBut I think as long as you have an objective kind of mindset while looking into this information, I think itโs just fun,โ Hovland said. โYou don't have to live and die by every word you read or thing you hear.โ
Masters invitations
Augusta National doesn't see a need to update its criteria to create a special category for LIV Golf players. Chairman Fred Ridley said that can be handled through special invitations, which is what Joaquin Niemann received each of the last two years.
U.S. Open and British Open organizers this year are exempting the leading player from the LIV Golf League points list.
โWe feel we can deal with that issue โ whether itโs a LIV player or a player on some other tour that might not otherwise be eligible for an invitation โ that we can handle that with a special invitation," Ridley said.
PGA Tour winners (that offer full FedEx Cup points) get automatic invitations. The LIV Golf players who won 54-hole tournaments since last year's Masters who are not at Augusta National this week are Brendan Steele, Carlos Ortiz, Adrian Meronk and Marc Leishman, who won last week at Doral.
All eight of the PGA Tour winners in the fall, where most fields were weak because they were primarily players trying to keep their tour cards, received invitations. That list includes Kevin Yu, Rafael Campos and Matt McCarty.
Key to the Masters is keeping the field under 100 players. The field is at 95 this year.
โWe will have a thorough examination of our qualifications after the tournament this year, and we may make some changes,โ Ridley said. โNot necessarily that, but some years we do make changes, some years we donโt.โ
He also said the Masters would study whether winners of strong European tour events, such as the BMW PGA Championship and Hero Dubai Desert Classic, should get an exemption.
Last-minute looper
Justin Thomas will have Joe Greiner on his bag this week, making the change Tuesday night after his usual caddie, Matt โRevโ Minister, hurt his back. Greiner had recently split with Max Homa, his longtime partner.
โIโm very lucky Joe Greiner is a great friend and able to help me out last minute,โ Thomas said on social media.
Greiner helped Homa tie for third at Augusta National last year. But the six-time PGA Tour winner has slumped badly since, and Greiner decided it would be best to split with his childhood friend ahead of last weekโs Texas Open.
โItโs hard. Iโm just so used to him caddying,โ said Homa, who now has Bill Harke on his bag. โItโs been hard to process, but also good in a way, because friendship does matter more than any of this stuff.โ
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AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson contributed to this report.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
