Life off the course holds far more allure for Lewis
Earlier this spring, Stacy Lewis, ranked 15th in earnings this year on the LPGA tour, reached a bit of a tipping point.
Over three weeks, she played in three consecutive tournaments. Her fiancé, Gerrod Chadwell, who is the women’s golf coach at the University of Houston, was away for two of them as the Cougars had tournaments of their own. In that gulf, Lewis and Chadwell went the whole time without seeing each other.
That should never happen again, Lewis thought, and precipitated a change. She no longer wanted to be apart from Chadwell for that long.
“You get on the phone, ‘I’m going to bed. OK, good night.’ That’s it,” Lewis said. “The communication is not there. We just don’t want to feel like we’re meeting each other for the first time.”
It was the latest flashpoint in Lewis’ juggling act this year. Despite her success on the tour, the golfer has found herself scrambling her priorities. After getting engaged in November and with a wedding coming up in August, she has realized her sport and her profession are no longer the most important.
Lewis, 31, admits that golf doesn’t always come first anymore. Even as she sits seventh in the Rolex Rankings going into the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship this week, Lewis is giving more weight and time to Chadwell and family when she is away from the course and less to her standing on the tour.
“It’s more the drive to be No. 1 in the world and to stay there,” she said. “There’s a lot of sacrifices that go into that. You don’t get any time for yourself. You’re giving most of your time to everybody else. It’s a hard position to be in. Not to say I’ll never be there — I might get back there. But that’s just not the ultimate goal anymore.”
In a way, Lewis is giving a public voice to a dilemma many face in the workplace. She is bouncing between her family and her ca- reer, and there are tradeoffs. While her results haven’t diminished — she has not won a tournament since 2014 but does have 18 top-10 finishes since the start of 2015 — her time is split.
Lewis no longer wants to slough off her personal life for her professional one.
“The priorities shifted,” she said. “I think it caught me off guard at first, because I didn’t really know how to handle that. It’s definitely an adjustment. I think it’s a good thing. I’ve wanted to have a family and have something other than just golf in my life.”
During a week off late last month, Lewis juggled wedding planning, a surprise party for her future mother-in-law and prac- tice. She will get married Aug. 6, nine days before she will represent the USA in the Olympics, and intends to take time off in that interim before heading to Rio de Janeiro.
It is a reflection, Lewis said, of her circumstances. Unlike golfers on the PGA Tour, LPGA competitors can’t always afford to bring family along on trips. Instead of accepting protracted periods apart, Lewis is willing to massage her schedule and Chadwell to do the same with his.
“It’s just been different,” she said. “I never thought I would feel that way. But it’s a good thing, because I’m going to be done with golf at some point. I’m going to spend more of my life with him than on a golf course.”