The Women’s Open comes after 8 months in 7 countries on 3 continents for the LPGA Tour

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Stacy Lewis is back at the top table of the media room, answering a late question from someone too shy to shout over the gusts during the news conference.

Her five-year-old daughter Chesnee wants to know if she can get a pool — “a big one” — if her mother wins here, as she did in 2013.

“I think I might be able to help you, girl,” Lewis says.

Eleven years have passed since the Texan shot birdie-birdie on the final two holes to win the Women’s Open by two shots. The second shot in 17 remains the best of her career, so much so that the 5-iron is the only club she has retained for office.

But in that time, as motherhood has put golf on her priority list and given her less tunnel vision, the demands of the LPGA Tour have become even more all-encompassing.

This year’s tour kicked off with two events in Florida and ends with three more in the Sunshine State. The intervening 10 months? A map of tangled zigzags across the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia that wouldn’t look out of place in Chesnee’s school notebook.

This week’s Open is the fifth major in as many months, apart from the Olympic Games at France’s Le Golf National earlier this month. St. Andrews concludes the Majors season, but with the Solheim Cup in September and another Pacific leg this fall, visiting China, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan and Hawaii in just 35 days, the schedule is rammed and it won’t end anytime soon.

During this press conference we only ask the most important questions!!!

Chesnee asked mother @Stacy_Lewis if she could get a swimming pool 🥰😂 pic.twitter.com/bhqgapR1Yz

— LPGA (@LPGA) August 21, 2024

Across the 33 combined LPGA Tour stops and majors this year, there are more than 215 hours of pure flight time. The total number of kilometers equates to more than three trips around the world.

This is not a new problem; last year’s schedule included a record 18 runs with more than 2,000 miles between tour stops. This season included trips to China and intracontinental visits to Thailand and Malaysia; crisscrossing the west coast from Los Angeles to the east coast of New Jersey in May; The swing in June from Michigan to the PGA Championship in Washington State and back to Michigan, two six-hour flights with only four days of rest in between each.

Eight and a half months into the season, with winds of 65 to 70 km per hour forecast for Thursday and many players having missed the Scottish Open to reacquaint themselves with links golf, it can be expected that every player on the top of their game? “Probably not, no,” said Lewis, who will captain Team USA for the Solheim Cup in Virginia next month. “Those who have played in the Olympics, you talk to most of them and it’s so emotionally taxing that week. So no, our schedule, especially the Olympic years, is really tough.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the schedule lately, but at the same time, I’ve been doing this for fifteen or sixteen years. You learn to deal with it, and you learn how to be ready in those moments and really do your best.”

Since 2009, the Women’s Open has grown from $2.2 million to $9 million, a 409 percent increase – a threefold increase since AIG began sponsoring the tournament in 2020.

Lewis described the improvement to infrastructure and facilities at the Women’s Open as “night and day” compared to 2013, but believes their hands are tied when it comes to finding ways to ease the grueling schedule.

“I think that’s the ideal, but it’s really about when do sponsors want to play and when do we get the golf courses?” she said.

“We don’t have the luxury of the PGA Tour saying, ‘We’ll give you X amount of dollars and we’ll play this week.’ We don’t have the money to just throw around.

“We are a bit at the mercy of sponsors. We are at the mercy of golf courses and that is the nature of where we are. Would we like to get better? Yes, absolutely. I think our team behind the scenes is working like crazy on it, but we’re on a world tour and I want to compete against the best players every week.

“So to do that, we have to go play in Thailand because we have players from Thailand. We are going to play in Korea because we have players from Korea. I guess that’s just the nature of it. I think what comes more to mind is that this is a worldwide tour. You say you’re going to play on the LPGA Tour, that’s what you signed up for.”

World number one Nelly Korda, who won six tournaments in seven starts between January and May, including the Chevron Championship, has earned more than $3 million in prize money this year.

That gives her the luxury of skipping the full Asia swing, a seven-week layoff at the start of the year sandwiched between her winning streak. But even the two-time major winner had to withdraw from the JM Eagle LA Championship in April due to exhaustion.

Nelly Korda has taken regular weeks off this season, a luxury not all LPGA pros can afford. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Lexi Thompson opened up the conversation about the mental and physical demands of the LPGA Tour in May when, at age 29, she announced her retirement at the end of the season.

She spoke of how “lonely” and all-consuming life on tour has been since qualifying for her first US Open at the age of 12, but believes there are ways the burden can be reduced.

“The schedule for sure,” Thompson said. “I think all the traveling brings a lot of value. I think the flow of the schedule could be better. Certain events can happen one after the other and close together. We travel out of the country a lot, but it’s a worldwide tour, so that’s part of it, and we’re very lucky with the sponsors we have outside the country.

“There’s a little less weight on my shoulders after the announcement because it’s been on my mind for a few years now, so it’s something that was in the works and no one really knew or what was going to happen.”

Catriona Matthew achieved her only major at the Open in 2009, winning just eleven weeks after giving birth at Royal Lytham & St Annes. Now 54 years old and making her final appearance at her home tournament, Matthew is at a loss as to how she ended up touring with her two children in the ensuing years.

To continue chasing another major in a field this deep, Lewis counts for 60 percent, because having the potential to win requires supreme resilience.

Lydia Ko is trying to end an eight-and-a-half-year drought this week, but the Australian is back in action after winning gold in Paris to become the 35th woman inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame.

She remains the youngest woman to ever win on the LPGA Tour after her triumph at age 15, but 12 years later there was an immediate dose of realism about how long she’s willing to endure the sore backs she experiences in the morning — and or she may bring forward her planned retirement at age 30.

“It can be scary in a way because I’ve been playing golf since I was 5,” Ko said.

“This is my life, whether I like it or not, and golf has given me so much to be grateful for, both on and off the golf course.

“As grateful as we are to be able to do what we love and compete at a high level, I think there is another side to it that you have to take into account. As someone who is maybe closer to that point in my career than when I was a rookie, you realize all these things and respect the player for the decision she made.

There are players still determined to join the majors club, most notably England’s Charley Hull, whose attitude to a recent shoulder injury reflects the mentality needed to deal with this brutal schedule.

“My shoulder just got a little tight, so I have been having acupuncture on it every other day because when it’s cold it can flare up a little bit,” she said.

‘I also have degenerated arthritis. So when it gets cold, it gets a little stiff. I’m just trying to keep warm.

“Other than that, I’m healthy and ready to go.”

(Top photo: Luke Walker/Getty Images)