LPGA set to tee off in Rogers

Maria Fassi was at home watching the final round of the Ladies Scottish Open as former University of Arkansas golfer Stacy Lewis was in a heated four-way battle for the championship.

When Lewis drained a 25-foot birdie putt to win in a playoff, Fassi said she jumped up and down in a long-distance celebration for the former Razorback, who claimed her first tour win since 2017, and first tour win since becoming a mother almost two years ago.

"I was just so excited for her and for what she has been able to accomplish," said Fassi last week while competing in the British Open at Royal Troon. "She proved that you can be a mom and still be a champion on the tour. That gives the rest of us who are planning to have children in the future that we can still have a career as a professional golfer. To see her do that, it was very special."

Lewis and Fassi will be competing head-to-head starting today in the 14th annual NW Arkansas Championship at Pinnacle Country Club in Rogers. The 54-hole event was postponed twice during the covid-19 pandemic and will be played without fans.

The tournament field is strong once again with eight former No. 1 players on the LPGA tour. Defending champion Sung Hyun Park will not be back to defend her title, but a number of former champions will be, including Lewis, who won the event in 2014.

Lewis said going from no LPGA events from February to late July, then playing four consecutive events including two overseas, has been a challenge.

"Right now I'm just working on jet lag," said Lewis in a Zoom interview Thursday. "But you just have to push through it. It's great to be back home and back here and out of quarantine in Scotland. You have a little more freedom and can actually get out some. I was glad to be able to see my husband and my daughter after being away for a month."

Lewis failed to make the cut at the British Open last week, but actually could benefit from that heading into this event, she said.

"At Troon, after playing four weeks in a row, it hit me mentally," she said. "I just ran out of gas on the last nine holes. Going from nothing to crazy busy playing a ton of golf, but I've had a few days to rest and here with the Friday start, it was a nice break."

Originally this event was to be played in late June, but when the coronavirus pandemic virus brought the sports world to a stop, the Rogers event was postponed first to July, then later to this August date. There are 10 events left on the revamped 2020 tournament calendar, capped by the CME Tour Championship the week before Christmas in Florida. This event is sandwiched between two majors with the ANA Inspiration set next week in California.

The tournament will again have a strong Arkansas flavor as current Razorback Brooke Matthews of Rogers will compete as an amateur under a sponsorship exemption along with Ela Anacona, Maria Hoyos and teenage phenom Alex Pano, who competed earlier this summer in an event in Bella Vista with Fassi, who won the tournament. Former Razorback Gaby Lopez, who was the first LPGA player to test positive for covid-19 when the tour restarted, is also in the field. Lopez and Lewis are paired together in today's first round.

The LPGA, like all sports across the country from preps to pros, will suffer significant financial loss in 2020, said Commissioner Mike Whan.

"It's a big number," said Whan when asked about the financial impact the loss of revenue because of covid-19. "This year 2020 is going to be a tough year, but nobody is going to cry over the LPGA. Everybody is having their own versions of a tough year including a lot of our sponsors as well. We've got to get through it. We'll probably lose more than half of what we saved in the last decade or two in one year. But what else were we saving it for if it wasn't to protect what the LPGA has been about for seven years?

"I feel bad for our TV partners all over the world who were counting on 34 events, and we're going to give them significantly less. They have advertisers and those advertisers have products to sell, so I know that the LPGA not playing is stuck on us, but it really rolls downhill pretty fast. So, yes it's a tough year, but it doesn't cripple us, it doesn't bring us to our knees. It's frustrating, it's unfortunate, it makes us just like everybody else. We're going to get through it. We're going to come back stronger than ever."

While 2020 was a tough year for the tour in every regard, Whan said the outlook for 2021 looks promising.

"I'm pretty comfortable that we'll have an even bigger schedule in2021 than we would have had pre-covid," Whan said. "It's nice to know that despite a really challenging 2020, it won't stop the momentum that we had, and quite frankly we'll be better in 2021 that we even would have been without the virus in2020, and that's an exciting thing to be able to say out loud."

Although fans won't be allowed at the tournament, they can watch all three rounds on the Golf Channel. Today's round will be tape-delayed starting at 6:30 p.m., but live coverage is planned for the final two rounds.