Min Woo Lee arrived at Aronimink Golf Club on Thursday with a major championship run that had grown thin. The 27-year-old Australian had missed the cut at the Masters and dropped under the radar through the early signature events of 2026. Round 1 of the 108th PGA Championship at Aronimink ended the silence: a 3-under 67 to share the early lead, and a frank explanation of why the start of the year had been a struggle.
"Over the last few months, I haven't" gotten off to a good start, Lee said. "Just a little bit of a mindset change. Go out there and be aggressive instead of, you know, that saying of you can shoot yourself out of a Thursday — but I think I nearly took that too far and played a little bit conservative. So I'm hitting the ball really good, so why not go at some pins and make some putts."
Lee's 67 placed him alongside Aldrich Potgieter, Scottie Scheffler, Stephan Jaeger, Justin Thomas, Ryo Hisatsune and Martin Kaymer at the top of a leaderboard that ran tight all afternoon. Aronimink's defence — heavy rough, tucked pins on Donald Ross green complexes, and gusting crosswinds in the late wave — held the field's collective scoring much closer than the pre-tournament 'bomb-and-gouge' framing had predicted.
Driving was Lee's anchor.
"Drove the ball really well," Lee said. "Every major you have to, but especially this course, the rough is pretty juicy, and you don't want to attack the greens out of the rough just because you can get some flyers or you can get some lies that sit down. So drove it really well, and pretty happy with that side of the game. I thought I played pretty solid all day. Didn't get myself in too much trouble."
Lee read the pin positions as a more genuine examination of skill than recent major setups have offered.
"I think they did a really good job on putting them in tough positions enough to think about it coming into the greens," Lee said. "It's a course where you don't want to leave it in bad positions just because it can bite you in the butt pretty quick."
The rough — particularly around the greens — was, in his view, the key to whether the leaders would stay at the top.
"Around the greens is very tough," Lee said. "You got to get somewhat lucky. You don't want to — it can be unpredictable. The ones that sit down, you give it a little bit more and then it just jumps. And then the ones that sit up, you think it's going to come out hard and it comes out soft. It comes down to a lot of feel and practice, but you can get some gnarly lies out there, especially around the greens. You just need to miss them in the right spots. If you have enough space, you can roll them up the greens. It's nice that it doesn't spin too much out of there. It just rolls out."
The remaining 54 holes at Aronimink will test the new aggressive setting Lee has dialled in. Asked whether the leaderboard could stretch and whether 3-under would still be the lead by Friday night, Lee did not think it would hold.
"I think someone may shoot a lower than that," Lee said. "I'm not sure what the wind is now. I don't know if it's going to get stronger, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone shoots four or five under. I think if you're driving the ball and you're a great iron player and you hole some putts, you can do it. I feel like I hit it really good, but missed a couple putts that I could have holed. We would like to hole all our putts, but I wouldn't be surprised."
Lee's question now is whether the version of his game that took advantage of Aronimink's morning window can survive the afternoon test on Friday and the firmer conditions through the weekend.
"It was kind of the right time to put the foot on the pedal a little bit," Lee said. "Hit some shots that needed to be more aggressive than not."
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*Originally published on [Golf News Global](https://golfnews.global/article/min-woo-lee-pga-championship-2026-round-1-67-aronimink-co-lead-mindset-change). Visit for full coverage.*
