Congratulations to K.H. Lee for winning the 2021 AT&T Byron Nelson at the tournament's new site…read morethis year at TPC Craig Ranch in the northeast Dallas suburb of McKinney. Lee became the second Korean in a row to win this event. Sung Kang won in 2019. The tournament wasn't held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lee and Kang joined Sang-moon Bae, who won in 2013, as three Koreans to win the AT&T Byron Nelson in the last eight times the tournament was staged. Over that stretch, Australian Steven Bowditch and Spaniard Sergio Garcia won in 2015 and 2016, respectively, with Americans Brendon Todd (2014), Billy Horschel (2017), and Aaron Wise (2018) covering the other years.
Speaking of the @originalwiseguy (that's Wise's handle on Instagram), one of the more infamous incidents that happened to an AT&T Byron Nelson champion was when Wise went in for a kiss with his girlfriend on live TV and got rejected: https://twitter.com/BJCunningham22/status/998376522938568704. It's all good though, at least, as far as we know: https://golf.com/news/aaron-wise-explains-funny-moment-during-viral-18th-hole-embrace-with-girlfriend/. I ended up meeting Wise when he qualified for the Tour Championship in Atlanta that same year (2018).
This used to be the old Dallas Open. The first tournament was held in 1944 and won by Byron Nelson. Beginning in 1968, the tournament began using Texas-native's name in its title. This is one of four official Tour events officially associated with a golf legend. The other three are the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Memorial Tournament (Jack Nicklaus), and the Genesis Invitational (Tiger Woods). The API, Memorial, and Genesis Invitational are slightly higher in status than the AT&T Byron Nelson. For example, those three tournaments are invitationals with slightly smaller and more selective fields. The Byron Nelson is a "regular" Tour event with standard qualifying. Also, as of 2021, those three tournaments award 550 FedEx Cup points to the winner. The Byron Nelson awards the standard 500 points. Finally, the API and Memorial award three-year Tour exemptions as opposed to the standard two years that this tournament awards.
All that said, outside of the majors, The Players Championship, WGC (World Golf Championships) events, FedEx Cup playoff events, the aforementioned invitationals, and the CJ Cup (okay, that *is* 14 tournaments; the Tour schedule is just packed), as of 2021, the AT&T Bryon Nelson is tied with the Wells Fargo Championship with the highest purse at $8.1 million. It's good money, especially for the caliber of field that has typically competed in this event, certainly in recent years. The fields at the AT&T Byron Nelson typically don't include a lot of the biggest names, mainly because this event immediately precedes the PGA Championship. Previously, it was the event that immediately followed The Players.
The AT&T Byron Nelson supports the Momentous Institute. Since aligning itself with Byron Nelson in 1968, the tournament has raised $167 million for the institute which "exists to build and repair social emotional health with children, families, and communities." Of all the tournaments on Tour, I believe the Byron Nelson has raised more funds for charitable causes than any other tournament. For more info on this great cause, visit http://www.attbyronnelson.org/our-cause/.