Richard T. Lee has made history as he will become the first Canadian to compete on LIV Golf.<\/p>\n
Lee, who was born in Toronto but spent most of his upbringing in Vancouver, won the LIV Golf Promotions event Sunday by a remarkable five shots.<\/p>\n
He told Sportsnet.ca by phone from Florida that his family, who are at their home in South Korea, were up through the night and were \u201cin tears.\u201d<\/p>\n
The top three golfers at the promotions finale earned full status on the PGA Tour rival circuit for 2026. Lee also won US$200,00 (C$278,310) \u2014 one of the biggest prizes of his entire 20-year professional career.<\/p>\n
Lee shot a 5-under 65 in the finale. Bjorn Hellgren of Sweden finished second while Anthony Kim, who continues on his comeback trail after years of exile from the game, finished third.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hasn\u2019t sunk in right now. I\u2019m at a loss for words,\u201d Lee said. \u201cI played really, really good this week and it was one of my best performances out of my whole career.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year is going to be an exciting year for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee is Canada\u2019s fifth-ranked male golfer in the Official World Golf Ranking at No. 171. He made headlines this past summer at the RBC Canadian Open as he was firmly in the mix at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley\u2019s North Course at the halfway point before finishing tied for 36th \u2014 his best-ever finish on the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n
Lee will not be able to, however, return to the Canadian Open this summer \u2014 or any PGA Tour event at all. By signing up and participating in the LIV Golf Promotions event, he received a one-year suspension from all PGA Tour-sanctioned events. There has been no Canadian to play LIV since its inception in 2021.<\/p>\n
Financially, for Lee, that matters little.<\/p>\n
Each LIV Golf event has $20-million purses (the same as the PGA Tour Signature Events) with an additional $5 million split amongst the top three teams each week.<\/p>\n
Lee has been playing solid golf over the last 12 months leading into the Promotions finale, having won the BNI Indonesian Masters on the Asian Tour in late 2024 and the Woori Financial Group Championship on the Korean PGA Tour in April of 2025. He said after missing out at PGA Tour Q-School late last year that he had a good practice with his coach at his wintertime home base in Arizona. Lee returned to South Korea, where he had to navigate some personal matters and was unable to play the LIV Promotions event there.<\/p>\n
He asked for a late invite and, well, here he is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was dialled in,\u201d Lee said of his week. \u201cI thought the greens were suited to my putting style. The course layout was exactly the way I wanted. It was just a course that I loved.\u201d<\/p>\n
There has been no shortage of noise around LIV Golf this winter, but there are certainly some positives for Lee for 2026. Both The Open Championship and the U.S. Open \u2014 where Lee made his PGA Tour debut in 2007 at Oakmont \u2014 will have direct pathways into their fields via LIV Golf in 2026. Lee said his golfing dream has always been to win a major.<\/p>\n
The LIV Golf campaign starts Feb. 4 in Riyadh (interestingly enough, that event will be played under the lights and at nighttime) before heading to Adelaide a week later.<\/p>\n
For now, Lee is part of the circuit as a free agent and is not part of any specific team. He\u2019s free to speak with any of the 13 teams and said if \u201cany\u201d team grabs him, he would \u201clove\u201d to be part of it.<\/p>\n
Lee said Friday to reporters in Florida that if he were to get one of the three LIV spots, it would be a \u201clife-changer.\u201d That, he said, was very much true come Sunday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year my family and I can travel together and become comfortable,\u201d he said, \u201cand hopefully play well this year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard T. Lee has made history as he will become the first Canadian to compete on LIV Golf.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-403698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}