Aussie major winner's new high
Minjee Lee is Australia's highest-ranked golfer again on the back of her PGA Championship win, jumping to world No.6 as it became clear she's unlikely to play a tournament in Australia in 2025.
Negotiations for the next staging of the women's Australian Open are ongoing after officials abandoned the dual-gender format that has been played for the past three years, with both tournaments returning to stand-alone events.
World No.2 Rory McIlroy is locked in for a return to the men's event being played at Royal Melbourne in December, but the women's tournament is set to be played early in 2026, a return to a timeslot more favourable to attract the world's best players.
The last stand-alone women's Australian Open was co-sanctioned with the LPGA Tour, played in Adelaide in February 2020, and attracted an elite field including world No.1 Nelly Korda, who won the event in 2019.
Lee reached a career-high ranking of No.2 in 2022, and had been a constant in the world's top 10 until midway through 2024 as she endured a 19-month winless drought.
The 29-year-old went into the PGA Championship ranked 24, having dropped out of the world's top 20 for the first time since 2015. FRISCO, TEXAS - JUNE 22: Minjee Lee of Australia poses with the trophy after winning the KPMG Women's PGA Championship 2025 at Fields Ranch East at PGA Frisco on June 22, 2025 in Frisco, Texas. (Photo by) Credit: Sam Hodde / Getty Images
But her return to the winner's circle in Texas delivered the rankings bump, lifting her over great friend Hannah Green, who fell out of the top 10 to No.11 and lost her place as Australia's highest-ranked player, male or female.
Jason Day, who finished fourth at the $30m Travellers Championship, is the only Australian male in the world's top 30, ranked 28.
In the wake of her win, Lee revealed how hard her coach, Richie Smith, had to work to get her to make the drastic switch to the long putter, a move that put her back on a path towards the No.1 ranking.
'I think he mentioned it to me like twice and I was like mucking around with it, so I would say it was a good change,' she said.
'I think just for me, it was taking the hands out of the putter. Just using my hands too much. So I was like manipulating the putter to the break. For me it was just using more of my shoulders to hit the point where I thought it was going to break and not making it break.
'I feel like I had a lot of doubt the past few years … I guess with my long game but more with my putting.
'I think the more I heard media and other people saying things about my putting, I think it got to me more and more over time.
'I guess I just had a lot of thoughts and just I was overthinking probably about just the conventional way of putting … and using the broomstick has really been helping me.'
Lee now has more majors than Greg Norman, who only won two, but is yet to reach the No.1 ranking the Great White Shark held for a mammoth 331 weeks. Minjee Lee of Australia reacts on the 18th hole green after winning the KPMG Women's PGA Championship Credit: Alex Slitz / Getty Images
Adam Scott and Day have also been world No.1, but there has never been an Australian female No.1, not even seven-time major champ Karrie Webb, with the women's rankings only introduced in 2006.
But Lee declared she had greater ambitions than getting to world No.1.
'I really wanted to be in the Hall of Fame. That's why I started golf. That's why I wanted to be on the LPGA Tour, to, you know, win a bunch of tournaments and try to get into it,' she said.
'I think I would really like to get there. We'll see how we go after this week.'
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It has been some time since he was making headlines, often for the wrong reasons, but he passed a modest professional milestone at the Mallorca Country Club on Tuesday. And brighter days could lie ahead for the 32-year-old, who has won four ATP titles and reached a high point of No.17 on the world rankings list in 2016 His Mallorca Open first-round defeat of fellow Australian Rinky Hijikata was his first win on the main Tour since the 2021 Australian Open. The world No.248, a qualifier at the Iberian tournament, will now face home hope Roberto Bautista Agut. Having narrowly missed the cut-off for Wimbledon qualifying, Tomic decided not to hang around in the hope of a late withdrawal in London. Instead he packed his bags and headed to the Spanish island of Mallorca, home of 22-time Grand Slam winner Rafael Nadal, and what he hoped would be another step on the long road back. Over the weekend he defeated Jasper De Jong, a Dutchman ranked 93 who recently won a round at the French Open, and Aleksandar Kovacevic, an American who sits at 77, to qualify for an event where the winner pockets A$250,000. Far from the big stages of sport, Tomic has been slogging it out on the tour backwaters in lower level and Challenger events in an attempt to break back into the top 100. It is all a distance from his colourful - and troubled - life in the limelight. The talent was there, he was once heralded as one of Australia's most promising talents, but it was so often overshadowed by brushes with various branches of officialdom, bust-ups with spectators and accusations of tanking. He even made a much-derided and very short-lived appearance on the TV reality show I'm a Celebrity ...Get Me Out of Here in 2018. On a darker side, there was the investigation for alleged match-fixing in 2022, though no charges were laid. Fast forward three years and perhaps a revival stirs. The Gold Coaster's defeat of Hijikata, who has already qualified for the main draw at Wimbledon, means he will jump to a spot just outside the top 200, which would put him in the frame to play in qualifying for the US Open in New York in late August. Meanwhile, in an all-Australian clash at Eastbourne, James Duckworth battled past Aleksandar Vukic 6-3 6-7 (5-7) 6-1. The party was over years ago, and his name remains the object of criticism, not to say some ridicule in many quarters, but veteran Australian bad-boy Bernard Tomic is plotting a quiet revival. It has been some time since he was making headlines, often for the wrong reasons, but he passed a modest professional milestone at the Mallorca Country Club on Tuesday. And brighter days could lie ahead for the 32-year-old, who has won four ATP titles and reached a high point of No.17 on the world rankings list in 2016 His Mallorca Open first-round defeat of fellow Australian Rinky Hijikata was his first win on the main Tour since the 2021 Australian Open. The world No.248, a qualifier at the Iberian tournament, will now face home hope Roberto Bautista Agut. Having narrowly missed the cut-off for Wimbledon qualifying, Tomic decided not to hang around in the hope of a late withdrawal in London. Instead he packed his bags and headed to the Spanish island of Mallorca, home of 22-time Grand Slam winner Rafael Nadal, and what he hoped would be another step on the long road back. Over the weekend he defeated Jasper De Jong, a Dutchman ranked 93 who recently won a round at the French Open, and Aleksandar Kovacevic, an American who sits at 77, to qualify for an event where the winner pockets A$250,000. Far from the big stages of sport, Tomic has been slogging it out on the tour backwaters in lower level and Challenger events in an attempt to break back into the top 100. It is all a distance from his colourful - and troubled - life in the limelight. The talent was there, he was once heralded as one of Australia's most promising talents, but it was so often overshadowed by brushes with various branches of officialdom, bust-ups with spectators and accusations of tanking. He even made a much-derided and very short-lived appearance on the TV reality show I'm a Celebrity ...Get Me Out of Here in 2018. On a darker side, there was the investigation for alleged match-fixing in 2022, though no charges were laid. Fast forward three years and perhaps a revival stirs. 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The Gold Coaster's defeat of Hijikata, who has already qualified for the main draw at Wimbledon, means he will jump to a spot just outside the top 200, which would put him in the frame to play in qualifying for the US Open in New York in late August. Meanwhile, in an all-Australian clash at Eastbourne, James Duckworth battled past Aleksandar Vukic 6-3 6-7 (5-7) 6-1.
