Open Championship 2026: 35 years on from Royal Birkdale, Ian Baker-Finch is back with a pitch for the world\u2019s best<\/a><\/p>\nBut while he tuned up the mechanics of his swing to be firing on all cylinders, it was what Lee accomplished between the ears that he was most proud of ahead of his 21st consecutive major start having debuted at The Open five years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the week, I was very happy with the way I played,\u201d Lee reflected of his week in Scotland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just felt like I was playing golf kind of at home and not letting the situation get me nervous\u2026 Of course, get a little nervous, but I felt like I went through the processes really good and just mentally felt really, really pleased.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that was the best I\u2019ve done mentally, which is great. Hopefully I can bring it into this week and majors going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a PGA TOUR win now on his resume, contending regularly in major championships is the next evolution of the 27-year-old.<\/p>\n
He has missed the cut in five of his past six major starts and admits that \u2013 like his swing \u2013 the learning curve is steep.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a week where everything\u2019s heightened, emotions are heightened, and you feel like you want to practise more, you feel like you want to do everything a lot more, which is obviously not the best sometimes,\u201d said Lee.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou learn a lot. You\u2019re still learning. Hopefully the week is the week that you play well, but there\u2019s a lot to debrief every week about.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully your golf is on that week, but majority you just want to play well and golf your ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee\u2019s championship tees off at 6:25pm AEST alongside American Ben Griffin and Japan\u2019s Hideki Matsuyama.<\/p>\n
New Zealand Open champion Daniel Hillier leads off the Australasian contingent at 3:46pm followed 11 minutes later by fellow Kiwi Ryan Fox.<\/p>\n
Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia Order of Merit winner Travis Smyth is the first of the Aussies to tee off at 5:47pm.<\/p>\n
All four days of The Open Championship will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 503 and Kayo Sports, Round 1 coverage starting at 3:30pm Thursday.<\/p>\n
MORE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP COVERAGE HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Photo: David Davies\/PA Images via Getty Images] His coach may not not be particularly enamoured by his famed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,5488,44,2503,10913,85],"class_list":["post-803194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-min-woo-lee","tag-news","tag-open-championship","tag-royal-birkdale","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}