Lewis uses downtime to retool swing posture

Stacy Lewis views the dark cloud of the coronavirus pandemic with a silver lining.

Since February, the LPGA Tour has been on hiatus as the pandemic spread across the globe. For Lewis, a four-time All-American at the University of Arkansas who won the 2007 NCAA title and is a two-time LPGA Player of the Year, the delay has been a chance to recharge and work on areas of her game.

"This has actually been good for me and good for my game," Lewis said from her home in Houston. "It's allowed me to work on some issues that I would not have been able to playing in tournaments every week."

Lewis' life on the tour changed dramatically after the birth of her daughter Chesnee in October 2018. She missed the final few events of the 2018 season. then played in 19 events in 2019, missing the cut in eight.

She admits she might have rushed her return to the course after her daughter's birth.

"Looking back on it, I probably should have taken more time," she said. "I played in my first tournament three months after I had her. So if I had it to do over again, I would probably take more time to get my body stronger and get in better shape because it took almost a year to get the little muscles stronger and my core better.

"It definitely took a lot longer than I thought it would."

Lewis has been able to take advantage of the golf practice facilities at the University of Houston, where her husband, Gerrod Chadwell, is the women's golf coach.

With the college players off campus, Lewis said she has had the facility pretty much to herself.

"Since the kids can't use it, I've been able to take Chesnee pretty much every day," Lewis said. "She runs around and plays and watches Mickey Mouse, and I practice."

Lewis' rapid return to the game could have been a factor in a painful rib injury that shortened her 2019 season. The injury forced her to withdraw from the Solheim Cup in September. She spent the offseason working on some changes to her swing posture, which she attributed to the injury.

"I had actually started the work on my swing a year or two before, but I hadn't felt right in a while, so I just dove into it with my swing coach," she said. "During this time, we've had a chance to look at it and decide what do we need to do.

"On my back swing, I was getting out of posture, which is a hard thing to work on if I was playing in a tournament. But since I'm not, this has been a really good time to work on it. We're trying to prevent injuries down the road, and hopefully I can play this game for as long as I want."

Lewis, 35, has won more than $12.5 million on the LPGA Tour and owns 12 tournament victories, including the 2014 Northwest Arkansas Championship at Pinnacle Golf Club in Rogers.

From 2012-17, she missed just three cuts. She was the 2014 tour money leader and a member of the 2016 U.S. Olympic team.

Lewis said the shutdown of the tour was not a surprise because she was following news of the pandemic already.

"We had been dealing with it before then," she said. "I was in Australia when it all started because I was supposed to go to Thailand, but I didn't go there. So it wasn't a surprise it was affecting the tour. But for it to come to the U.S. was kind of shocking to everyone."

Lewis was getting ready to make preparations for an event in Arizona. Chesnee travels with Lewis on tour, making the travel arrangements a little more complicated.

"I was close to having to start packing," she said, "but I was glad the way [LPGA Commissioner] Mike Whan handled it. He gave us all the information upfront and didn't let us all fly to Phoenix and have to turn around and fly home."

The downtime also has provided Lewis more time to spend as a family with her husband and daughter.

"This time, to her, she doesn't know the difference," Lewis said. "She's kept us busy. On the road, I would have seen Chesnee a lot. Now she's used to having both us around. Once we do get back to somewhat normal, she will have a hard time with it.

"It's a lot easier to raise a kid at home rather than travel around the world."

But Lewis said she is itching to get back to the competition.

The LPGA originally had planned to restart in June, but that has since been moved to a mid-July date. The NW Arkansas Championship has been rescheduled for the last week of August.

"I didn't get to play much at the end of last year, and I've only played in a handful of tournaments in the past year, so I just want to be competitive again," Lewis said. "The first week of June my husband and I are playing in a member-member tournament at our golf course, so that will be my first tournament. That will be good to have to make a putt. To have to make a putt or to hit a shot, that's what I'm looking forward to.

"For the month of June, I plan to play as much as I can, to get into that play mode instead of just working on a golf-swing mode."

Lewis offered some opinions on how professional golf can move toward a return.

"Golf is a sport where if we do all the protocols and everything behind the scenes that we should really be out there playing in a tournament really easily," she said. "I see caddies out on the course, maybe not no fans but a limited number of fans. Changes to tent structure and hospitality, I see that happening.

"One of the biggest changes for our tournaments will probably be the pro-ams. Pro-ams are vital to our success. That is a really big part of it. How do you do pro-ams? Will people feel comfortable playing in them? That's going to be the biggest thing for us going forward. Are executives going to fly in to play in these pro-ams with everything going on?"

Lewis envisions more testing of the players and limited locker room access. She believes player dining rooms will be eliminated, and players might be required to stay at the same hotel.

"There are a lot of things that will have to be ironed out," she said. "Hopefully the PGA Tour will start in June, and that will be a big indicator for us on whether we're going to fire up in July."

Sports on 05/24/2020