Winner's Bag
The driver tweak that helped Min Woo Lee win the 2025 Texas Children's Houston Open
Jonathan Bachman
When you don’t have a PGA Tour win on your ledger, it’s just natural to be fielding questions about how you’ll handle starting with the lead on Sunday. Min Woo Lee, however, had an appropriate answer.
“I'm starting to learn golf is golf and don't get too emotional about bad shots, it's going to happen, especially on a Sunday even if you had the lead or not,” he said. “Yeah, don't get ahead of yourself, one shot at a time.”
That mindset, along with a couple of timely shots, gave Lee his long-awaited first victory at the Texas Children’s Houston Open. Lee let a tee shot get away from him at the par-5 eighth, resulting in an unplayable lie. Lee got up-and-down for par, however, then followed that by staking a pitching wedge at the par-3 ninth for a momentum-restoring birdie. A late run by Scottie Scheffler and a bad bogey by Lee at the par-5 16th made things tight, but Lee held on.
Lee uses a split set of Callaway irons, including muscleback-blade forged prototypes made just for him. The prototype irons, which have Nippon Modus 125X shafts, have a squarish high toe and the pitching wedge is stamped “10” instead of “PW.”
A small tweak to his Callaway Elyte Triple Diamond driver helped, too. Lee, working with his coach, dropped the loft down to 8.5 degrees to lessen the spin (his previous gamer was 9 degrees). Lee ranked fifth in driving distance at 317 yards per measured drive.
Still, it was on the greens where Lee was on fire—appropriate for a guy who has a “Let Him Cook” chef’s logo on his golf ball (he also uses a play number of 27 as he was born on the 27th of July). Lee wielded his Odyssey O-Works #1 Wide putter better than anyone in the field, nearly nine shots better than the field average.
Which should answer all those questions once and for all.
What Min Woo Lee had in the bag at the 2025 Texas Children’s Houston Open
Ball: Callaway Chrome Tour X
Driver: Callaway Elyte Triple Diamond (Fujikura Ventus Blue 6X), 8.5 degrees
3-wood: Callaway Elyte Triple Diamond, 16.5 degrees
Irons (3): Callaway X Forged UT; (4-5): Callaway X-Forged; (6-PW): Callaway Forged Prototype
Wedges: Callaway Opus (50 degrees); Titleist Vokey SM10 (56 degrees); Titleist Vokey SM9 WedgeWorks (60 degrees)
Putter: Odyssey O-Works #1 Wide