⛳️ Min Woo Lee hits the ball miles — but that’s not what’s driving his PGA Tour success
My Week in Sport(s) ⛳️ 🏏 🏀 ⚽️ 🏉
Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.
Covered in this edition: ⛳️ Min Woo Lee, 🏏 Sunrisers Hyderabad, 🏀 Steph Curry, ⚽️ Cata Coll and 🏉 Leinster.
⛳️ Min Woo Lee hits the ball miles — but that’s not what’s driving his PGA Tour success
The more I think about it, the less I’m sure that ‘ball-striking’ is precise enough a term to be really meaningful in discussions of top-level golf. Take Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, for instance — undoubtedly two of contemporary golf’s great ball-strikers.
But they separate themselves from their peers in different ways. McIlroy dominates off the tee; Scheffler earns more of his money with his iron play approaching the green. 26-year-old Min Woo Lee — who recorded his first PGA Tour victory last week — is another who often gets placed in that ‘ball-striking’ category with them. His skills aren’t quite at the level of McIlroy and Scheffler yet, but the Australian has developed a cult following by pairing a dash of personality with the ability to swing the club fast.
To get a sense of the former, you can look at Lee’s Instagram. And the PGA Tour’s official radar measurements reveal the latter: when it comes off his driver, the ball carries further than it does for anyone else on tour. In his career so far, Lee’s average drive on a par-four or par-five hole has travelled 306.6 yards in the air — longer than known bombers like McIlroy and Sweden’s Ludvig Åberg. (An aside on Åberg’s gorgeous ball flight: he hits it higher than anyone in the 300-yard-plus club.)
Despite his gaudy raw numbers, Lee’s driving performance in Strokes-Gained terms is actually quite mixed — mainly because he hasn’t been able to consistently keep the ball straight. According to Data Golf, Lee’s strong start to the 2025 season is really a result of two things: a hot putter, and significant improvement in his approach play. This has historically been the weakest part of his game — especially further from the green — but this year he has been playing to a Tour-average level with his irons.
Lee is on an upward trajectory ahead of the Masters, then. The bad news is that we shouldn’t expect too much from a player with his skill profile in the first Major of the year: each round at Augusta sees players hit “roughly 2 more long(ish) irons…than at a typical PGA Tour course”. The good news? For the first time, every ball that players hit on the practice range next week will be tracked, too. However his tournament goes, you won’t be short of chances to watch Min Woo Lee crush golf balls.
🏏 Sunrisers Hyderabad’s aggressive strategy reveals a broader truth about batting in the IPL
It’s pretty commonly understood that scoring rates in the Indian Premier League — men’s T20 cricket’s major franchise competition — are only getting higher. That’s true in the aggregate, at least; at team level, things are a bit more complicated.
This becomes clear when you compare every franchise’s run rate to league average in each season since 2022, when the IPL last expanded; no team has recorded an above-average mark in all three of the completed seasons during this period. Even stringing together two years of fast scoring has been difficult: if they continue at their current pace in 2025, Sunrisers Hyderabad could become the first franchise of this era to score their runs at least 5% faster than average in two consecutive seasons.
Sunrisers scored 201 runs per 120 balls last year, while the IPL in aggregate averaged 191. Through four games this year, they’ve averaged 202 — 10 runs higher than the league’s par score of 192. Under head coach Daniel Vettori, who joined after the 2023 season, the team have been vocal about their desire to break batting records; on this evidence, it might not be an exaggeration to say that they’re the only team in the modern IPL that has been able to consistently execute an identifiable batting strategy.
What else I learned last week
🏀 Steph Curry can still make tough shots — but creates fewer easy ones
Steph Curry has built an NBA career out of shooting more accurately than everyone else from some of the most difficult spots on the court. At age 37, the Golden State Warriors guard is still firing: he put together another 50-point game just this week.
In his prime, Curry used his athleticism and anticipation to generate the easiest of shots, too. Off the dribble, he constantly beat defenders to the basket; without the ball, he raced to open spaces behind the shorter three-point line in the corners before opponents could react. Between 2014 and 2019, corner threes and lay-ups made up around 27% of his regular-season field-goal attempts. Some of his burst has gone, though: in the three seasons since 2022, that figure has dropped to just 14%.
⚽️ Cata Coll’s busier year in goal may be a warning sign for Barça Femení
Barça Femení comfortably won their recent UWCL tie against Wolfsburg, but one of the goals they allowed was striking. Cata Coll rushed out of her box to deal with a defence-splitting pass; she couldn’t clear, and the ball ended up in the empty net.
Why was this notable? In Liga F play this season, Barça’s goalie is having to complete many more defensive actions outside her team’s box — 2.8 per 90 minutes, up from 1.6 in 2023-24 — despite the team’s overall share of possession increasing from 71% to 75%. This might be a result of Coll receiving different tactical instructions from her new head coach. Equally, though, it could be a sign that Barça’s backline — which contains a number of players in their 30s — isn’t quite as nimble as it used to be.
🏉 Overseas imports have added firepower to Leinster’s declining attack
Irish province Leinster are still one of the strongest teams in men’s club rugby. For for the last two seasons, however, they’ve taken a different route to success — under the guidance of former Springboks head coach and defensive expert Jacques Nienaber.
The team’s attack has declined by about nine points per game from its 2022-23 peak under previous coach Stuart Lancaster. They have added two potent on-ball threats this season, though: South Africa’s RG Snyman is dominating up front, and All Black Jordie Barrett is a skilled, physical presence in their backline. So far this year, per Oval, the pair have offloaded successfully out of the tackle on 24.8% of their carries; in aggregate, Leinster’s other players have only managed an offload rate of 6.2%.
The next edition of My Week in Sport(s) will be published on Friday April 11th.
