Nueva’s Lee is on a roll

“I was playing pretty well during that stretch, but I went about a month, from mid-May to mid-June, where I was kind of struggling,” said Lee, who lives in Burlingame. “I had to put in some work to get back to where I was.”

That work has certainly paid off with Lee playing some of the best golf of his career. He opened his summer season with a second-place finish at the Bayonet Amateur in Monterey in June and has since followed that up with two wins. Not only has he won his last two starts, he’s done it in back-to-back weeks in dominant fashion.

Last weekend, Lee captured the Northern California Golf Association Junior Amateur championship at Pleasanton’s Ruby Hills Golf & Country Club.

This on the heels of winning the British Columbia Junior Boys Amateur championship the first week of July.

“To be completely honest, there are still parts of my game I want to clean up, but I’m exceeding my expectations,” Lee said. “This is probably the best golf I’ve ever played.”

The NCGA Junior Amateur has a rich history, with past winners including San Francisco natives and PGA Tour majors winners Ken Venturi and Johnny Miller, along with former Evergreen Valley-San Jose standout Justin Suh.

Lee will get his name etched onto the championship trophy following his three-round total of 12-under 204 — five shots clear of second-place finisher Zack Tarter of Hanford.

He put the field on notice on the first day, firing a 7-under 65, with seven birdies against just one bogey, to take a two-shot lead. He shot an even-par 72 in the second round and then put away the championship with a 5-under 68 on the final day.

Lee said the Ruby Hills course can be tough, but said the tournament organizers made things a bit easier.

“They moved the tees forward a bit. Typically that course is pretty hard, but they set it pretty easy for what they could have done,” Lee said. “But I was playing pretty well.”

Despite the low number, it was only the second-best outing for Lee. It came on the heels of his defense of the British Columbia Junior Boys Amateur championship, a four-day tournament in Canada that saw Lee card a blistering 17-under.

Born in San Francisco, both of Lee’s parents are Canadian and he holds dual citizenship for both the United States and Canada.

In a sign of things to come, Lee came out firing at the Prince George Golf & Curling Club, opening with a 7-under 65, which was good for a one-shot lead. He kept up his hot play in the second round, carding a 5-under 66 to move to 12-under. Over the final two days, he had rounds of 3-under 68 and 2-under 69 to finish eight shots ahead of the Ryan Vest, who finished at 9-under.

“It was a lot of fun. I got to go up (to Canada) and see some people I see only once or twice a year,” said Lee, who said he still has a lot of family in British Columbia. “The course was a bit wide open. You just had to be accurate coming into the greens. I was putting well, which gave me a lot of opportunities.”

Lee has taken advantage of a multitude of opportunities as he has taken a big leap in his golf game. While neither of his parents were into golf, Lee was introduced to the game at a young age at a summer camp at Crystal Springs Golf Course in Burlingame.

“I was 7 or 8 and I just got the bug and started practicing,” Lee said. “I kept playing because it was fun.”

It didn’t take long for Lee to find tournaments to enter and he said he was playing competitively about a year after taking up the game.

“I’ve always been super competitive by nature,” Lee said.

Last summer was the first time that he really dove into the deep end of amateur golf. He started with a breakthrough win at the 2022 British Columbia Boys Junior Amateur, which is why his repeat performance two weeks ago meant a lot to him.

“It was really the first big tournament that I won,” Lee said. “It got me ranked in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. That tournament will always hold a special place in my heart.”

It was also the beginning of a golf trip that most golfers dream about — he and his dad took a two-week trip to the United Kingdom, playing in both Scotland and England, generally considered the birthplace of the sport.

While most of the trip was for pleasure, Lee did manage to squeeze in a couple tournaments. Fresh off his win in the BC Junior Am, he took sixth in the Scottish Boys U16 Open Championship, followed by a 64th-place finish in the English Boys’ U16 Open Amateur Stroke Play Championship.

“Last summer, I traveled a lot. It was really the first summer I was traveling for golf,” Lee said. “From the BC Junior, we flew straight from there to Glasgow (Scotland). … We then drove from Scotland all the way down the south coast of England.

“It was a golf vacation with a couple tournaments tacked on.”

He returned to North America and finished 34th in the Canadian Junior Championship, 38th at the California State Fair Championship and a fourth-place finish at the NextGen Selection Camp in Canada.

This season, Lee finished 33rd in the San Francisco City Championship and two more top-50 finishes at tournaments in Arizona and Santa Clara before his recent dominant run.

And his summer isn’t over. This weekend, he’ll be at Poppy Hills in Monterey for the NCGA Stroke Play Amateur Championship and in two weeks he’ll play in the prestigious Pacific Coast Amateur in Vancouver, Canada. That will be followed by the Canadian Amateur Championship in August.

But it’s the Pacific Coast Am that Lee is most looking forward to.

“It’s going to be a really strong field. A lot of the top-50 amateurs in the world will be there,” Lee said. “It will be tough. There are a lot of players better than me that can hopefully pick their brains and get better. … There are just subtle differences between good amateurs and great amateurs and the pros. I haven’t learned all of those yet.”

Despite his successes over the last year, Lee understands the ebbs and flows of golf. That’s why it’s important to him to enjoy playing the game.

“You go through so many highs and lows. It’s hard to sustain if for several months. So I just try to enjoy it and make it last,” Lee said. “I just try to play because I like to play and it’s fun for me. … The way I view it, I enjoy practicing. … The more you enjoy it, the more easily it will come.”