Minjee Lee made good use of her early tee time on day one of the 71st U.S. Women’s Open Championship, shooting a superb opening round 67 to sit three shots back of leader Mirim Lee.

The 20-year-old has been in contention almost every week she has teed it up so far on the LPGA Tour in 2016, and continued her solid play from tee to green on the testing CordeValle layout “I felt like I was really solid, like my iron play was really solid,” Lee said. “And if I missed my drives, it was sort of just in the first cut or maybe just in the rough. So I thought I struck the ball really well today. I gave myself a lot of opportunities for birdie.”

The 20-year-old Australian, who won her second LPGA title at the Lotte Championship in Hawaii earlier this year, has already proven that she has the taste for major championships with three top 15 finishes in the majors in her rookie year in 2015. Her best finish came at the 2015 RICOH Women’s British Open when she finished in a tie for ninth.  

Lee is one of a group of impressive young stars currently taking the LPGA Tour by storm, through the first 19 events of the LPGA season, the average age of winners is 21.05 with the oldest being 28 (Ana Nordqvist). Additionally, the two players who have won majors so far in 2016, Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson, were 19 and 18 respectively at the times of their wins. 

Karrie Webb also played in the early morning wave, but couldn`t take advantage of the more favorable scoring conditions shooting a 1 over par 73, while So Oh shot a 3 over par 75 playing in the afternoon wave, which played more than 2 shots more difficult than the morning. The average score on day one was 74.34.
Bidding to become the youngest ever winner of the event Lydia Ko shot a 1 over par 73, while Liv Cheng, playing in her first US Open shot a disappointing 9 over par 81. 

For live scoring go to http://www.lpga.com/leaderboard

Round 2 of The 2016 US Women’s Open will be broadcast live on FoxSports 2 from 5:00am (AEST) Saturday morning.

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