Feature: Stacy Lewis (at the Manulife Financial LPGA Classic July 10, 2013)
by Jeffrey Reed, Editor, LondonOntarioGolf.com
After three decades as a cynical scribe, I don’t put athletes on a pedestal. Heck, my last real sports hero was Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and, like everyone, even Pops had flaws. But every once in a while, an athlete comes along who really inspires me to greatness. But what I didn’t know about LPGA Tour star Stacy Lewis before meeting her today is that her heart is as big as her talent on the golf course.
Lewis, the 2012 Rolex Player of the Year, had already inspired me to play great golf. At age 28, she owns a well-documented story of overcoming the impossible. From age 11, Lewis wore a back brace 18 hours per day for seven and one half years to correct curvature in her spine from scoliosis, removing it only to play golf. Growing up outside Houston, Texas, she had back surgery during her senior year of high school and redshirted for one season before joining the University of Arkansas women’s golf team.
In 2012, Lewis made the cut 25 times over 26 events, and earned $1,872,409 thanks in large to four wins. Grabbing World No. 1 status, she led the Tour in birdies, eagles and rounds in the 60s. Not too shabby for someone who is a walking miracle on the golf course.
Lewis and I share a common bond: neither one of us is supposed to excel on the golf course, given our physical challenges, but here we are, enjoying a game we love. Of course, Lewis, makes me look like an amateur at best on the links. But we do share the role of underdog from tee to green.
Much of my golf operations today involve public speaking about my physical disabilities – club feet, curvature of the spine, protruding pelvis and Spina Bifida Occulta. Doctors told me that by age 50 I could very well be living out of a wheelchair. Here I am, age 51, still playing to a low single-digit handicap. Doctors tell me it’s a miracle I am able to play golf – but they also say golf has saved my life.
Lewis An Inspiration
It’s no stretch to say that golf has saved Lewis’s life, too – and it has made her a bulldog of a competitor.
“It was golf that got me through my back problems,” said Lewis. “That was my time out of the brace – the time I could forget about it, a time when I really wasn’t different than anybody else. It’s helped me be the person that I have become.
“I think with all of my back issues, I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder,” said Lewis, 2007 NCAA Individual Golf Champion with the Razorbacks. ”I’ve always felt like kind of the world has been against me. It’s really not that way. But it felt like every setback and every time a door got slammed shut, it made me that kind of person. On the course, give me the hardest shot and I’ll probably get it up and down. Tell me I can’t do something, and I’ll probably do it. That’s who I am. It made me that way.”
After just a minute or two after speaking with Lewis, it was evident we are both on the same page as far as caring for a delicate back. Lewis remembered that after her surgery, when a modified steel rod was placed in her back, she couldn’t play golf for six months. “It probably took two years before I felt better. For a year, every plane ride, it would get very sore. A lot of times I couldn’t shots the next day. But now it’s great. I really take care of it. I know my body well. If my hamstrings get a little tight or my hips get a little tight, I know my body well and how to take care of it. I don’t let it get to the point where I can’t golf. And it helps my golf swing because I notice little things with my body that maybe others wouldn’t.”
During recent rounds, after long drives to the course, it has taken me five or six holes to be able to swing well, despite good warmups at the range – there are good days and bad days. It can get tiring explaining to new partners on the links that I do live with physical challenges and that I’m really not a terrible golfer (OK so there are days when I just plain suck – but that’s golf). Yet, until I started public speaking and inspiring others, it was bothersome having to answer questions about my back. (You can read about my story here http://www.jeffreyreedreporting.com/speaking.htm ).
Lewis, who gets letters from kids and parents all over the world who are inspired by her play on the LPGA Tour, says she didn’t always want to talk about her back issues.
“When I first turned pro, I just wanted to be known for my golf. But all anyone wanted to know about was my back. They thought it was an amazing story. But for me at the time, it was just something I went through. It wasn’t a big deal. My parents never made it a big deal. So I was frustrated with that at first. But now I know that just me playing golf inspires people.”
One Day At A Time
Doctors tell me the best thing I can do is to keep active, but also that at any time I may have to give up golf and fight for more than a low handicap. Likewise, Lewis says it’s important to live in the moment.
“(PGA Tour’s) Ken Duke had the same surgery and he’s mid-40s and still playing. (Duke won his first PGA Tour tournament – the Travelers Championship – in June). It gives me hope. But nobody is really doing what I’m doing. The doctors don’t really know. They know what their testing tells them. But obviously I’m not living a normal life. There’s no time table. And if anything that helps me because I don’t have this mentality, ‘I’m going to play for 10 years and I’m done, I’ll retire.’ I’m playing until I can’t do it anymore.
“I’ve never been one to make long-terms goals,” explains Lewis. “Say my goal is to get in the World Golf Hall of Fame. Well, what if my back won’t let me play that long? I can’t be made about that. So I’m very short-term oriented. And I take each tournament as it comes.”
During a Wednesday post Pro-Am media conference at this week’s Manulife Financial LPGA Classic at Grey Silo GC in Waterloo, defending champion Brittany Lang called Lewis “one of the most giving people I have ever met.” Lewis recently donated money to her beloved Razorbacks so they can build a modern short game practice facility. More importantly, she works extensively with kids, and with the Scoliosis Research Society.
“I think it’s important that everybody help others,” said Lewis.
No athlete deserves to be put on a pedestal. But when athletes like Lewis see their personal stories bring attention to their amazing accomplishments, everyone can gain by learning to have hope and to be determined to win their own fights.
I’m no Ken Duke or Stacy Lewis. But during my speaking engagements, I can now tell more about Lewis’s story, and help inspire others. Lewis will even help me from tee to green on those days when it’s tough to make a full swing.
And with apologies to the Canadians on Tour, it’s going to be a lot more fun watching the LPGA Tour now that I’m in Stacy Lewis’s corner.
