[Photo: Getty images]

Min Woo Lee has welcomed the pressure of being the the defending Australian PGA champion and taking on major winners Cameron Smith and Jason Day at Royal Queensland this week.

Basically, if the kitchen is hot, the chef wants to cook.

Lee underlined an emphatic win at Royal Queensland last year with a chip-in eagle on the ninth at Royal Queensland en route to securing his third career DP World Tour victory. He ignited the Brisbane galleries with his antics, such as viking clapping his way down the party hole, par-3 17th and – given he often uses the slogan, “Let him cook!” on social media – he wore a chef’s hat fans had made for him.

A year later, the world No.48 arrived at 1am on Tuesday morning from Dubai, where at last week’s DP World Tour finale he finished T-24. He was out at Royal Queensland only hours later fulfilling defending champion, media and sponsor obligations.

“Just being in a tournament that you are coming back to defend is a special feeling, and especially being here on the grounds now, it’s cool,” Lee said in his Tuesday press conference. The winner of the 2021 Scottish Open and 2023 Macao Open said defending a tournament was a perk of being a tour pro.

“You can either put the pressure on you or you can smell the flowers, and enjoy what you did last year,” he said. “I guess that’s my approach. I don’t mind when there’s a bit of pressure on me. I do tend to play better just because I don’t want to stuff up and I don’t want to get too lazy. I’m going to go out there and hopefully give a show to the crowds.”

Lee’s Australian PGA win set up a fantastic 2024 season on the PGA Tour, his first as a card-carrying member in the US. Highlights included top-25s at the Masters and US Open and two runner-up results on the PGA Tour regular. He represented Australia at the Olympic Games and the Internationals at the Presidents Cup in Canada.

The brother of two-time LPGA Tour major champion Minjee said he was confident of a maiden PGA Tour win in 2025.

“I feel like my game’s very close to being in contention,” he said. “I haven’t really just converted when I needed to, but one aspect of the game I needed to get better at was my approach play, and the last few months have proven that the work that my team has done has got there because I’m hitting it better.

“I used to miss a lot of greens and then make a lot of up and downs, but now I’m hitting greens. Hopefully I can hit it closer and hole some putts.”

Lee isn’t afraid to take on a host of winners on the PGA Tour and DP World Tour at the Australian PGA, including 2022 British Open champion Smith, 2015 PGA Championship winner and former world No.1 Day, Cameron Davis, Marc Leishman and others. If the tournament were to shake out as a battle between Lee and Smith, a three-time Australian PGA winner including in 2022 at Royal Queensland, Lee said he’d have fun with it.

“He didn’t prep that great last year, but obviously you live and you learn,” Lee said of Smith missing the cut last year. “He’s playing good golf (this year), hopefully I play good golf and hopefully the others do.”