Stacy Lewis will donate the entire winner’s share of $195,000 to Hurricane Harvey relief in her adopted home state of Texas after the two-time major champion held off a hard-charging In Gee Chun on Sunday at the LPGA’s Cambia Portland Classic.
Stacy Lewis donates entire winner’s check to Hurricane Harvey relief after ending 3-year winless drought
Lewis delivers a long-awaited win — and a huge victory checkto the people of Houston — after holding off In Gee Chun in Portland.
For Lewis, who had not prevailed on the LPGA Tour since the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship in June 2014, the victory meant far more than an end to her long winless skid. After pledging Wednesday to donate her earnings from the event to relief efforts in Texas, the 32-year-old former world No. 1 was on a mission to help those at home suffering from the enormously destructive impact of the storm.
“We’re going to be able to help people rebuild houses and get their homes back, and that’s more important than any win,” a drained, but smiling, Lewis said after finishing with a 3-under 69, a 20-under for the week, and hugging her husband Gerrod Chadwell, who had flown in from Houston, where he coaches the University of Houston’s women’s golf team, to surprise her after Sunday’s tension-filled finale.
With so many players and others from the golf world affected by the hurricane and making their own sizable donations, KPMG, one of Lewis’ sponsors, announced during Sunday’s final round that the company would match her donation.
Lewis grew up in The Woodlands, outside Houston, and lives nearby with Chadwell, so it was especially difficult for her to be away from home when the hurricane hit with calamitous impact.
Saturday night, after backing up a second-round 64 with a 65, Lewis said a victory on Sunday for the folks back home would be “up there” with winning a major — and she should know, having captured the 2011 Kraft Nabisco Championship and the 2013 Women’s British Open.
“It would be probably one of my most special wins, just to be able to do this for the people in Texas and to do it too when everybody is watching,” Lewis told reporters. “I kind of put all the eyeballs on me and put some pressure on myself, so it’s nice to kind of see myself performing, too.”
Though the win was all about helping others, Lewis also heaved a sigh of relief for getting “the monkey off my back” and knowing she could “hit the shots when I need to and hit the putts when I need to.”
It certainly wasn’t an easy win, what with Chun breathing down her neck down the stretch. Lewis began Sunday’s finale three shots up on Moriya Jutanugarn and four on Chun, but the tournament went down to the wire as the runner-up fired a final-round 66.
Lewis owned a four-shot cushion at the turn, but a Chun birdie on 12 sliced her lead to two and another birdie at 16 made it a razor-thin, one-shot edge.
It appeared that Lewis would lose her advantage when she hit her approach to the par-4 17th over the green while Chun found the putting surface. But a huge par putt from Lewis sent the tourney to the 18th, where Chun missed the green and Lewis hit it from a fairway bunker and made a two-putt par to save her emotional victory.
