The first time Minjee Lee teed up at the Women’s Scottish Open was in 2017, and she had a remarkable debut when she finished solo 8th. She came very close to a victory the next year, and this week, she tees it up for the ninth time at the prestigious event. “I think I like when we do get the opportunities to play links golf. I really enjoy this type of golf, I guess,” Lee said about playing on the links course. “I just like the cool weather. Sometimes the elements do get the better of us, but I just like doing two weeks in England or the UK,” she said. The “two weeks” she is referring to also includes the AIG Women’s Open, following this week, a tournament where Lee has her eyes set on a fourth major title—one that would solidify her place among golf’s greats. But for Lee, how that legacy is defined remains a matter of debate.

Minjee Lee feels four majors are not enough

It was just in June when Minjee Lee earned her third major title at the 2025 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. “It feels pretty amazing. I feel like I really deserve this one. I put a lot of hard work into it. I feel really good,” Lee said after the win at Fields Ranch East. This win added to her existing two — the 2021 Evian Championship and the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open. Now, a victory at the AIG Women’s Open next week would make her the latest to achieve what the LPGA defines as a career ‘grand slam’—winning four of the five recognized majors.

However, when asked whether winning four is truly enough, Lee hesitated. “I think for me, like all five is the goal,” she said candidly. “So I think it’s just different for us because we have five and we don’t have four. I think it should be—I don’t know what it should be, but I just think for me, five is the goal, yeah,” she said in a press conference on Tuesday at Dundonald Links. This nuanced take comes at a time when Lydia Ko is herself chasing the elusive grand slam before a planned early retirement.

Ko, who has also won three majors, needs one more to meet the LPGA’s threshold. But Lee follows in the footsteps of Ko, who also said earlier this year that she, too, would love to win all five majors. “I would love a chance of winning all five different Majors. For me that would be the continuation of the fairytale. So why not try for another happy ending?” she said after inducting herself into the hall of fame last year.

But Minjee Lee’s comments open a broader discussion about how the women’s game defines its milestones. In men’s golf, the grand slam has a long-established benchmark of four majors. But the LPGA has evolved differently. The LPGA calendar includes five majors—the Chevron Championship, the U.S. Women’s Open, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, the Evian Championship, and the AIG Women’s Open. The tour’s criteria state that a player needs to win any four of the five to achieve a career grand slam. Yet for players like Lee, whose ambitions are self-defined and rooted in competitive integrity, anything short of five feels incomplete. It’s clear that while the criteria demands just four, both Lee and Ko want a complete sweep of all five majors that will satisfy their definition of excellence. Ko’s aspirations mirror Lee’s—she, too, isn’t content with just meeting the Hall of Fame requirements and feels she has a long way before retiring.

Chasing a Grand Slam like Lee, Lydia Ko feels retirement is far

Last year, Ko had a phenomenal year, winning the Olympic Gold and inducting herself into the LPGA Hall of Fame. A player needs a minimum of 27 points to qualify for the Hall of Fame. Ko has won the 2016 Chevron Championship, the 2024 British Open, and the 2015 Evian Championship, and even won all three Olympic medals (2024 – Gold, 2016 – Silver, 2020- Bronze). But earlier this year, she said that she would want to follow in the footsteps of her idol, Lorena Ochoa, and retire when she is “still playing well.” Ko also added, “I don’t know when that moment is right now, although I’ve always said that I can’t see myself playing after I’m 30,” in an interview in Golf Monthly’s January issue.

She also added that she would like to achieve the Grand Slam this year, as she turned 28 — “This year my thoughts have turned to the possibility of completing the career Grand Slam. It’s good to have goals.” But later in March, when Lexi Thompson‘s retirement debate was doing the rounds, Ko spoke of her retirement plans. “I think when I was younger, I said I wanted to retire when I’m 30, and now that I’m inching closer to 30, I’m like, four years is still a long time from now. I’m honestly taking it by the day and taking it by the week. When that happens, you’re almost in the middle of the year, and then you’re done with the majors and all that. So I don’t really have a certain date when I want to retire,” she said at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore.