Recovery Shot
How an LPGA Tour pro helped her hometown bounce back from a natural disaster.
By Stacy LewisWHEN I WAS 11 YEARS OLD, I MOVED TO THE WOODLANDS, A SUBURB OF HOUSTON. After a few moves and a wedding, I am now back in the Houston area again. Houston will always be home to me. That’s why at the beginning of a round when the starter says “Stacy Lewis from The Woodlands, Texas,” I feel a rush of pride.
Last August, as Hurricane Harvey devastated my city, I was competing in a tournament in Canada, but I was checking in with my husband, Gerrod Chadwell, the head coach of Women’s Golf at the University of Houston. “It’s still raining, and it’s still raining hard,” he kept saying. My husband and the other golf coaches were using kayaks and paddleboards to try to salvage the golf team’s equipment from its flooded home course—one distressing story among so many.
At first, I felt helpless. There was nothing that I could do. The pictures and stories were unimaginable. But then news stories came out about how other golfers and athletes were helping in the relief effort. I wanted to give myself some focus and purpose for the week, so I decided to donate my paycheck. I was hoping to make an impact financially but also raise awareness of the need.
The Cambia Portland Classic is a wonderful event, and one of my favorite courses on tour, so winning was not out of the question. I’d already had six top-10 finishes on the season—but nice, consistent play hadn’t translated into a victory in quite some time. In fact, I hadn’t won on the LPGA Tour in more than three years. I’d been playing well even with all that was going on and felt like my game as trending in the right direction.
A first-round 70 didn’t suggest anything special was in the cards, but a second-round 64 and third-round 65 gave me a three-stroke lead going into Sunday.
“The response was
—Dr. Stacy Lewis, LPGA Tour Star
crazy—so big, so positive and so rewarding.”
It’s funny—for three years, I’d been working so hard on trying to win. Then, suddenly, you take away that focus and replace it with just trying to make as much money as you can for your neighbors and for your community, and the winning takes care of itself. I made it through a nerve-racking back nine and closed with a solid 69.
