Lewis poised for strong ‘sophomore’ season on LPGA Tour
Photo provided by Sterling Sports Management
The crowds waved, cheered and chanted. They applauded every shot. And Stacy Lewis soaked it all in.
Funny thing about those cheers, though. Most of them were not directed at Lewis, who was charging up the leaderboard on the final day of the Tres Marias Championship. The object of the crowd’s affection was Lewis’ playing partner, Lorena Ochoa.
Ochoa, of course, forged one of the most successful LPGA careers in history and was heading into retirement following last weekend’s event in her native Mexico. Her compatriots showered her with appreciation from the first tee to the 18th green.
Meanwhile, Lewis, the 25-year-old American in just her second full season on the LPGA Tour, managed to block out all of the hysteria to fire the round of the day. Her bogey-free 7-under-par, including a birdie on No. 18, moved her within one stroke of leader Ai Miyazato and forced the Japanese star to par the final hole to avoid a playoff and win the tournament.
“I had never seen so many people following one person before,” said Lewis in a phone interview with 7CsGOLF.com. “The fans were all chanting her name, they were all going crazy. She’s so good with them. You can tell why they love her so much.
“I was just trying to get out of the way. I was just happy to put a little pressure on Ai at the end.”
Miyazato did make the putt and cashed the winner’s check, leaving Lewis to settle for the best finish of her brief LPGA career.
The pairing of Lewis with Ochoa might actually symbolize a passing of the torch. Ochoa is at the end of her successful run, while Lewis has only just begun to go down the path of what promises to be her own stellar career.
Five events into her second season on tour, Lewis has shown tremendous growth and a more mature approach in her game. She’s made the cut in all but one event, and her earnings for the year are already more than half of what she made in ’09.
In January, she started working with a new instructor, Joe Hallett, at the PGA Center for Golf Learning and Performance in Port St. Lucie, Fla. She attributes her more consistent play in large part to him.
“It was just little things with my swing to get me in a better position at the top and make the swing easier and repeatable,” she said. “We laugh all the time. He’s so much fun and makes me more relaxed and not worry about my swing.”
That attitude, she said, is light years from where she was just a year ago. Her rookie season got off to a good start, but, she said, in the early middle part of the campaign, anxiety set in.
She missed a few cuts and began to practice more maniacally, even hitting balls after every round. Now, however, she’s emphasizing quality over quantity, working smarter as opposed to working longer.
“I thought I needed to practice all the time and play (all the time) and that was going to get me better,” she said. “But really I needed to take a step back and see things from another angle. I think I did that this off-season. My head is in a better place.”
Lewis said she has hit the ball well all season, but, early on, she just wasn’t seeing the results. After missing the cut in her third event, the Kia Classic, she placed T19 at the Kraft Nabisco Championship. Then came last weekend’s stunning performance that was outdone only by Miyazato, the Tour’s hottest player at the moment.
She called the Tres Marias Championship the best four rounds she’s played in her pro career. And to further illustrate how far she’s come, she harkened back to the 2008 U.S. Women’s Open, her first event as a professional, where she led after three rounds before faltering on Sunday.
“I think the first three days I was kind of naïve and didn’t know what was going on, and I just kind of fell into the lead on the third day,” she said. “The final day, I was really nervous and uncomfortable in that position, and I think it kind of showed.
“I was talking to my parents and comparing how I felt (at the ’08 Open to Tres Marias) … it was night and day. I was so comfortable in that position, even on 18 when I needed a birdie to force Ai to make something.”
Lewis is hoping for more tournaments like that as the season progresses. She said she’s not going to put too much pressure on herself – which she admits she did after a successful amateur career and two top-five finishes in majors in ’08 – but simply try to put herself in a position to win on Sundays.
Of course, that she can golf at all is nothing short of amazing. A large part of Stacy Lewis’ story revolves around her bout with scoliosis, a severe curvature of the spine, when she was young.
After more than seven years in a brace, she finally needed surgery to correct the problem at age 18. The rest – an NCAA championship at Arkansas, the No. 1 amateur ranking, winning LPGA Q School. – is history.
She said that she grew weary of talking about her affliction once she turned professional. But as the notes and e-mails from parents and children affected by the condition kept on coming, she found that many were looking to her for encouragement.
“I just wanted to be known for my golf,” she said. “But now I realize that it’s a part of me and I can really use it to inspire people. That’s kind of what I’m out here for, and it’s a part of me and needs to be a part of me.”
Her charity and her game are likely to endear her to legions golf fans. Perhaps some years down the road she’ll get a sendoff to retirement just like Lorena Ochoa.
“To win as many times as she did in such a short amount of time is tough,” said Lewis. “But I think I have the kind of game that can be successful.”
– By Chuck Curti
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