ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Stacy Lewis returned to her table at the top of the press room, answering a delayed question from someone too shy to yell during a news conference because of wind gusts.
Her five-year-old daughter, Chesney, wants to know if her mother wins here, like she did in 2013, she will get a pool, and a “big pool” as well.
“I think I can do something about you, miss,” Lewis says.
It's been 11 years since the Texas native won the Women's Open by two strokes, with birdie-birdie on the final two holes. Her second shot on the 17th was the best of her career, and the only club she uses in the office is a 5-iron.
But during that time, motherhood usurped golf on her list of priorities, and as her perspective narrowed, the demands of the LPGA Tour became even more all-consuming.
This year's tour starts with two events in Florida and ends with three in the Sunshine State. The 10 months in between resemble a zigzagging map across the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia that wouldn't look out of place in Chesney's school notebook.
This week's Open marks the fifth major in three months, not including the Olympic at Le Golf National in France earlier this month. The major season ends at St. Andrews, but with the Solheim Cup in September and the Pacific leg in the autumn visiting China, Korea, Malaysia, Japan and Hawaii in just 35 days, the schedule is packed and shows no signs of ending soon.
We will only ask the most important questions at this press conference!!!
Chesney asked his mom. Stacey Lewis If only she had a pool 🥰😂 pic.twitter.com/bhqgapR1Yz
— LPGA (@LPGA) August 21, 2024
This year’s 33 combined LPGA Tour and major championships will total more than 215 hours of pure flight time – enough to fly around the earth more than three times.
This is not a new problem. Last year's schedule included a record 18 tours with more than 2,000 miles between tour stops. This season, there were trips to China, visits to Thailand and Malaysia within the continent, a crisscross from the west coast of Los Angeles to the east coast of New Jersey in May, and a round trip from Michigan to the PGA Championship in Washington state and back again in June, with two six-hour flights separated by four days of rest each.
Eight and a half months into the season, with 40-45 mph winds predicted for Thursday and many players missing the Scottish Open to get reaccustomed to links golf, can any player be expected to perform at their best? “Probably not,” said Lewis, who will captain the U.S. team at next month's Solheim Cup in Virginia. “If you talk to most of the players who have played in the Olympics, that week is very taxing mentally. So, especially in an Olympic year, our schedule is really, really tough.”
“It's a lot more about schedules these days, but at the same time, I've been doing this for 15, 16 years. You learn how to deal with it, you learn how to prepare for the moment and you just really do your best.”
Going deeper
The Women's Open will be held at St. Andrews. The Old Course is ripe for the challenge.
Since 2009, the Women's Open's total prize money has increased from $2.2 million to $9 million, a 409% increase, and it has tripled since AIG became a sponsor of the tournament in 2020.
Lewis said the Women's Open's infrastructure and facilities had improved “like night and day” since 2013, but believes they are at a loss when it comes to finding ways to ease the gruelling schedule.
“I think that would be ideal, but the big question is when the sponsors want to play and when they can get the golf course,” she said.
“We don’t have the luxury of being able to say, ‘We’ll pay you X amount of dollars and you’ll play this week,’ like the PGA Tour does. We don’t have the money to just throw around.
“We're kind of at the mercy of our sponsors. We're at the mercy of the golf course and that's the nature of where we are. Do we want to get better? Yeah, of course. I'm sure the team behind the scenes are working hard but we're a world tour and we want to compete against the best every week.”
“So, to do that, I've got to play in Thailand because they have Thai players. I'm going to play in Korea because they have Korean players. I think that's the natural thing to do. For me, it's just more of hammering home in my mind that this is a global tour. If you say you're going to play on the LPGA Tour, this is what you signed up for, too.”
World No. 1 Nelly Korda won six tournaments in seven starts between January and May, including the Chevron Championship, and has earned more than $3 million in prize money this year.
That gave her the luxury of skipping the entire seven-week Asian Tour between winning streaks earlier this year, but even the two-time major champion had to withdraw from the JM Eagle LA Championship in April, citing fatigue.
Nelly Korda has frequently taken weeks off this season, a luxury not available to all LPGA pros. (Michael Reeves/Getty Images)
Lexi Thompson announced in May that she would retire after this season at just 29 years old, sparking a discussion about the mental and physical demands of the LPGA Tour.
She has spoken about how “lonely” and all-consuming life on tour has been since playing in her first U.S. Open at age 12, but believes there are ways to ease the burden.
“Definitely the schedule,” Thompson says. “I think the travel is a challenge. I think the flow of the schedule could be improved. Maybe certain events could be held back to back in locations closer to each other. We travel internationally a lot, but it's a world tour, so that's to be expected. We're very lucky to have international sponsors.”
“After this announcement, I felt a little bit of a weight lifted off my shoulders. It's been on my mind for years, so it was something in my mind that nobody knew about and I didn't know what was going to happen.”
Catriona Matthew won her only major title, the British Open, at Royal Lytham & St Annes in 2009, just 11 weeks after giving birth. Now 54, it will be her last appearance on home soil, but Matthew doesn't know how Catriona managed to lug two children around on tour in the intervening years.
Lewis will need extraordinary tenacity to hold on to another major title against such a tough field that he sees himself as having a 60 percent chance of winning.
Lydia Ko is looking to end an eight-and-a-half-year drought without a major tournament this week, with the Australian riding high after winning gold in Paris and becoming the 35th woman inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame.
She remains the youngest woman to win on the LPGA Tour since she was 15, but 12 years later, realism is quickly emerging about how much longer she plans to overcome morning back pain and whether she might accelerate her planned retirement at 30.
“I've been playing golf since I was 5 years old so in a way it might be scary,” Ko said.
“Whether I like it or not, this is my life. Golf has given me so much to be grateful for, both on and off the golf course.”
“I'm very grateful to be able to do what I love and compete at a high level, but I think there are other aspects that have to be taken into consideration. As someone who's closer to that stage in my career than I was as a rookie, I've come to understand all of that and respect the decisions players make.”
Some players remain committed to making the major leagues — most notably England's Charlie Hull — and his attitude through a recent shoulder injury is emblematic of the mindset needed to handle this grueling schedule.
“My shoulder has become a little stiff so I've been getting acupuncture treatments every other day as the pain gets worse when it's cold,” she said.
“I also have osteoarthritis, so when it gets cold it gets a little stiff. I just try to keep myself warm.”
“Other than that I'm healthy and ready to go.”
(Top photo: Luke Walker/Getty Images)
