There have been five previous players named Jeongeun Lee on the Korean LPGA Tour.
The latest wanted to avoid confusion and simply added the number “6” to her last name.
And “6” turned out to be the lucky and winning number for the latest of the Jeongeun Lees — Jeongeun Lee6 is your 2019 U.S. Women’s Open champion.
It was a superb performance by a just-turned 23-year-old rookie who has played pretty well this season on the LPGA Tour but stepped onto the biggest stage Sunday in women’s golf and didn’t flinch when the rest of the contenders were wilting like week-old Magnolia blossoms on the sidewalks of Charleston.
Lee the Sixth kept her wits about her while the rest were not.
Right out of the box, disaster was striking most of the contenders. Paul Azinger called it “a disaster.”
Celine Boutier started the day tied for the lead with former Duke teammate Yu Liu. Both were seven-under to start the final round at Charleston Country Club.
Boutier got kicked in her boutier right off the bat. She made double at the first then a bogey at the third and would never see the lead again.
Liu was worse. She bogeyed three of her first four holes, never to be heard from again.
And you would think that Lexi Thompson would step it up. After all, she was the most credentialed player among the final eight and the only major champion. But no. She bogeyed three of her first four holes and despite the wide fairways on this Seth Raynor design, Lexi couldn’t find one. She spent most of the day puking on her Pumas with an assortment of mediocre wedge shots, an incredibly inadequate short game and a putting stroke no one would want to copy.
Lexi showed up without a full tank of gas and never contended.
Jay Marie Green tried her best but she simply didn’t have enough firepower to pull off the upset.
Instead, it was the sixth edition of Jeongeun Lees that proved the most consistent on this day of wretched inconsistency.
She bogeyed her first hole but said she still, “felt calm” after that and promptly birdied the second. She then rattled off eight straight pars. Then she did what none of the rest could do — she made two straight birdies and found herself seven-under par and moving past the field of Nervous Nellies.
She got an easy birdie at the par five 15th and was eight-under — it was looking like a runaway. But the choking was contagious and Lee6 decided to make it a little closer down the stretch.
A bogey at the 16th by Lee6 was an invitation for Boutier, who was hanging around. She worked her way back to five-under through 15 and was looking at the three-footer at 16 to get to six-under and put the heat on “6.” But no, seeing as this was a Choke-Fest, Boutier gagged the near-gimme to let “6” off the hook.
Six made another bogey at 18 to finish this Choke-Fest, shot 70 for the magic “6”-under par.
Boutier got one final kick in the boutier with a closing double. Book-end doubles and she fell all the way back to three-under and tied for fifth.
For the record, Lexi Thompson, Angel Yin and So Yeon Ryu tied for second at four-under. Ryu had the most fun of that trio, she got to dose her fellow South Korea, Lee6, with champagne.
This wasn’t good golf, it was so very hard to watch.
And the zeroes at FOX didn’t bring much to the dance either.
But in the end, perhaps, maybe everyone should let Hank Haney off the hook.
After all, it was Hank who predicted “a Lee” would win.
The Sixth Lee. And it was the right Lee. After all, she won $1,000,000.
She lists her hobby as “Shopping.”
