The GETTING OF wisdom

If he’d been rolling around next-door at Barbagallo Raceway, Min Woo Lee would have been in nothing more than second gear.

Then 19, Lee had a day earlier carded a 68 at nearby Lake Karrinyup Country Club, effectively ensuring he would advance to the match play phase of the Australian Amateur Championship.

But here he was on day two, now at the Wanneroo layout in suburban north Perth, a couple over through 10 holes when I caught him for the first time of the week-long tournament.

I’d long since had his name highlighted in my “little black book” and had a banter-filled relationship with this irreverent prodigy who’d lost the final of this revered event a year earlier in what was regarded by most involved as quite the upset.

So, it was understandable that he was just doing the bare minimum to place himself somewhere in the top-30 or so in the two-course stroke play appetiser to the week’s main course.

Cheekily as we strolled the second hole (his 11th), I suggested that chasing medallist honours was out of his reach because he was going through the motions.

“Oh yeah, what’s the lead?” Lee asked, his interest suddenly piqued at two-under.

I told him the mark was nine-under, for the record shared by Darcy Boyd and Connor McKinney.

“Let’s see.”

From memory, I might have wagered him lunch that it was impossible.

I think the Wanneroo chef