ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND | Stacy Lewis’ first observation on the eve of this week’s AIG Women’s Open at St. Andrews concerned the color of the links. Back in 2013, when she won the championship, the grass was brown and dry. Now, it is soft and green, which is what the R&A wanted when the forecast was so fearsome an affair as to put one in mind of the European Tour’s 1973 John Player Classic at Turnberry.
That was the week when the then golf correspondent at The Scotsman adjusted a line from that old seafarer’s hymn to suggest that locals had gathered in the church to pray “for those in peril on the tee.”
The other thing to have changed since 2013 is Lewis herself. Breaking into the most cheerful of smiles, this winner of 13 LPGA titles conceded to being “a much more balanced person than I used to be. I made a lot of sacrifices to be the world No. 1, and I’m glad I did what I did. But the trouble back then was that everything revolved around me and my golf.”
At 39, Lewis finds that everything revolves around her 5-year-old daughter, Chesnee. “She’s my priority. Having a child and playing competitive golf at the same time was tough at the start, especially in weeks when my parents weren’t around to help. The worst days were the ones when she would wake up at 6 in the morning and I wasn’t off the tee until 1 o’clock.
“Of course, it was tiring, but it gets easier, and I’m certainly not about to say that you can’t win when you’re a mom. It’s 100 percent possible. I know because I did it myself in 2020 at the Scottish Open at the Renaissance.”
In her press conference, Lewis picked out Scotland’s Catriona Matthew, who will turn 55 on Sunday and is a member of Lewis’ group for the first two rounds this week, as the player who had done most to inspire her when it came to blending motherhood with golf. Not only had Matthew, who is playing in her 30th and last Women’s Open, teed up in the 2009 championship at Royal Lytham and St. Annes 11 weeks after giving birth to Sophie, the younger of her two daughters, but she had made off with the trophy.
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