3 things you can learn from the clubs Minjee Lee used to win the U.S. Women’s Open

Australia’s Minjee Lee walked away from the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club with more than just a USGA trophy. Minjee also took home the largest single prize payout for a women’s professional golf event in history at $1.8 million dollars and made some more history along the way by breaking both the 54 and total event scoring record of 13 under par (217).

Although few golfers on the planet possess Minjee’s talent and skill, there is still a lot that can be learned from the way her golf clubs are setup to maximize performance that golfers of all skill levels can learn from – here are the top three biggest takeaways from Minjee Lee’s clubs: 

45.5” driver

Minjee uses a 45.5” driver that helped her rank 2nd in strokes gained off the tee at Pine Needles and is one of the big reasons she currently holds the lowest scoring average on the LPGA Tour this season.

Longer drives lead to shorter approaches, shorter approaches lead to tighter proximity to the hole, and shots closer to the hole lead to fewer putts – the recipe for low scores!

Non “matching” shaft flexes through the set

This is something we don’t emphasize enough: just because a shaft is marked a designated flex, doesn’t make it equal to other shafts with the same designation. Unlike club loft or lie angle which has a universally quantifiable way to measure, there is no industry standard for flex when it comes to golf shafts. 

For Minjee, she has regular flex shafts in her driver through to her hybrid, but her irons and wedges transition to stiff flex from different brands. It just goes to show that not everything has to match from a label perspective to offer the best performance.

Consistent Wedge Loft Gapping

One of the biggest mistakes amateur golfers makes is not sequencing their wedge lofts to create proper gapping at the bottom end of their bag, which leads to indecision and bad shot selection. In fact, most golfers are completely unaware of the loft of their pitching wedge altogether which is why Titleist as an example has put the loft on their set pitching wedges since the release of the 620 and T-Series irons in 2019.

Minjee’s Srixon ZX7 irons have a 46° pitching wedge and from there her wedges sequence in 4° loft increments to 50°-54°-58° so at any yardage she can be confident in her club selection.  

You can take a look at the gear Lee used all week at Pine Needles.

Driver: Srixon ZX7 (Mitsubishi Diamana DF50-R 45.5″ shaft) 10.5 degrees

3-Wood: Srixon ZXF #3 (Fujikura Ventus Red 6-R 42 7/8″ shaft), 16 degrees

5-Wood: Srixon ZXF #5, (Fujikura Ventus Red 6-R, 42.5″ shaft), 18 degrees

Hybrid: Srixon ZXH #4 (Graphite Design Hyb 85-R 39.5″ shaft)

Irons: Srixon ZX7 (5-P; SteelFiber i80-Stiff shafts)

Wedges: Cleveland RTX ZipCore (50, 54-Mid, 58-low Nippon NS Pro 950 shafts)

Putter: Scotty Cameron Circle T Newport 2 Special Select

Ball: Srixon Z-Star

Golf.com Editor

Ryan Barath is GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com’s senior editor for equipment. He has an extensive club-fitting and -building background with more than 20 years of experience working with golfers of all skill levels, including PGA Tour players. Before joining the staff, he was the lead content strategist for Tour Experience Golf, in Toronto, Canada.

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