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DIAMOND RESORTS TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

January 19, 2019

Stacy Lewis

Lake Buena Vista, Florida

Q. How was your day?
STACY LEWIS: It was good. Hit it a lot better today. I kind of struggled yesterday hitting the ball and left myself in some weird places yesterday. And then today finally got some better looks at it, shorter clubs into holes, which helped. Played nice and fast too, which was awesome.

Q. Overall, how do you feel about your position for your first time out?
STACY LEWIS: I'm really happy. Honestly, if I could finish this thing under par for four days, I was going to be happy. Just I've hit some good chip shots, I've hit some good putts. I feel like the touch and the feel is coming back. I still hit some weird golf shots, which is fatigue, I think, more than anything. Got pretty tired towards the end of the round yesterday. Just really happy where things are.

Q. And the balance with first-time balancing?
STACY LEWIS: It's been good. We've gotten into a really good rhythm of getting out the door in the morning. Just have to wake up a lot earlier than I thought I needed to. We got into a good rhythm of that, and it's fun to finish and have that to look forward to. It's been really fun so far.

Q. Smucker's, are they here? The daycare?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah, daycare's here. Yes, sponsored by Smucker's.

Q. How is that working?
STACY LEWIS: It's been good. Bardine -- they've been doing it for 27 years, so I've been asking her more questions. She'll ask me how I do something, and I'm like, well, how should I do it? So I'm looking for pointers from her. I know Chesnee's fine with them. We come in, and she's been happy. She slept nine hours the last two nights. So I need to find out what they're doing in daycare to get her to sleep like that. She's been great.

Q. You've had three days of this unique atmosphere. What do you think?
STACY LEWIS: It's a lot of fun. I think we need to tweak 18 a little bit, make it a little shorter. There wasn't a backup today because 16 was drivable, so there wasn't a backup. I think we make 18 a little shorter and you'll see some better golf shots at the end.

Other than that, it's been great to watch these guys play and kind of cut up and have fun with them. And they can play. That's the crazy thing. These guys are good golfers. It's fun to see the competitive side come out in them again.

Q. I would think some players might be wary of coming into this atmosphere. Maybe it's not something they feel comfortable in. But what would you tell them about it as a leadoff event?
STACY LEWIS: I'd say it's the first event of the year. I just think it's such a great way to start the year. It's super relaxed, and these guys are out here having fun. Maybe middle of the year you're grinding to make a U.S. Open, it's a little bit different. But I just think, to start the year, it's just a lot of fun. I'd tell people to come see it because it's very different than anything, any tournament I've ever played in.

Q. Stacy, I was trying to work on a little something. Ten years Mike Whan's been here now. What was your first year, '09-ish?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah, I think we came about the same time.

Q. What's been the biggest change since then?
STACY LEWIS: Everything's changed. Just the way he treats sponsors and -- one, he sees the value in us as players, but he's able to take these sponsors and whatever it is, whether it's a Diamond Resorts or Marathon or KPMG, find out what's important to them and make it theirs. KPMG or Marathon wouldn't want this environment, but Diamond Resorts does. So he's made the sponsors, I think, feel special and feel important, which they are.

We've got work to do, I think, still with some majors and specifically Evian still has some work to do. So work's never done, but I think he's done a really good job so far.

Q. What are the goals for the future growth? In talking to the people with the Tour, purses continue to go up, more tournaments than they've had in a long time. They've added ten, I think. On TV, 90 percent of the coverage is going to be live this year. How big is that for one, just the live coverage?
STACY LEWIS: Live coverage is huge, but honestly I think we need network TV, which is what we've got this weekend. Network TV, ultimately, that's what's going to get our purses to go up is network TV. I think our Golf Channel deal is up end of this year, two years maybe?

Q. After '19.
STACY LEWIS: Yeah, after this year. So I think, if we can somehow work a deal with network TV, that's going to be -- that would be a huge thing for our Tour.

Q. What are other avenues -- excuse me. There are other avenues to grow the game now that weren't even around. Really they're just kind of starting, Twitter and Instagram. How big do you think that's been for you guys to connect with fans and grow the game?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah, I think that's what's unique about golf specifically is you can get pretty close. I was talking to Sterling and asking him at football games they never got any -- had any interaction with fans. So what's unique about golf is you have that interaction.

So you have the social media where they can take an experience on the golf course, and they can send you a message later in the day. Of course there's a bad side to it as well, but I think it just helps people get to know us and want to come out and watch us.

Q. And last thing, what do you think the ultimate end game could be for the Tour? How big can it be? How popular?
STACY LEWIS: I mean, there's no end game, I don't think. I think you look at what the PGA TOUR is doing, and I'd like to be playing for the same amount of money as the guys. That's where I think we should be. You look at -- what's disappointing to me is the Houston Open was just announced for the guys, and that's a $7.5 million purse. You know what, an average event for us is 1.5 to 2. So there's still a lot of work to do.

Q. (No microphone)?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah, I was just a little tired yesterday and didn't hit quite as good. On this golf course, if you leave yourself in bad spots, you can hit bogeys pretty quickly.

Q. You're at a special time in your life where every day is a new day.
STACY LEWIS: It is. You know, we're sitting at dinner last night and you can see she's over there pooping, and then it's outside her clothes. It's a great dinner. So you forget about your tee time the next morning. It's just a great back to reality, you know.

Q. Absolutely. They bring you back, and you don't go far.
STACY LEWIS: That's right.

Q. I'll give you a little hint, though, being grandparents is a lot more fun. You feed them sugar and send them home.
STACY LEWIS: I've been an aunt for about seven years, and that's been the best. This is still pretty cool, though.

Q. Comments on playing partners? How was it playing with Blair and Sterling today?
STACY LEWIS: Well, second day with Sterling. He was super relaxed today, and we were just having fun. He was giving Travis hell all day long, so it was awesome.

Q. About what?
STACY LEWIS: Just telling him he's a horrible caddie, that he was talking too much. Travis will give waters to Gerrod and stuff, and he's handing out waters to random people. Then he went to clean his golf ball for him, and Travis dropped it. It was just all over after it. So just cutting up and fun.

Blair was awesome. She played great today. I was impressed. She shot 1 under on her ball. So it was fun to watch.

Q. Did you have any preconceived ideas coming into this event and what it might be like playing with celebrities? Has it been like you thought or different?
STACY LEWIS: It's been like I thought. I would say the golf has been better than I expected. These guys can play, across the board. Yeah, most of them are athletes, so they can play. Just cool watching them play and seeing the competitive side come out in them. Playing with Glavine first day, he was getting kind of mad. You could tell he was, just that competitiveness coming out. I don't know, it's been really cool. I'd like to see 18 be a little shorter.

Q. What are you hitting in there? That was a nice putt.
STACY LEWIS: Smoked a hybrid. I turned a hybrid in there. It was 200 yards. At least today we didn't have to sit there and wait like we have been.

Q. See the cornhole there on the side?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah. Let's hit like a 7 iron if we're going to sit there and play cornhole before we have to hit a rough shot. That's really the only thing I would see different. I like the format of it is really cool playing with these guys.

Q. The LPGA has to do things outside of the box sometimes to get the attention. My first thought was does a ToC, is it kind of weird having a celebrity component to a ToC? I don't know, it's growing on me. What do you think?
STACY LEWIS: I just think if you -- if you just had 26 LPGA people here, would you have all these fans here?

Q. No.
STACY LEWIS: And that answers your question right there. A Tournament of Champions thing is great, but when you add it up, we really don't have that many winners. So my thing is are we going to draw enough people here to support it? And you wouldn't. So with the celebrities, it just adds a whole other component of people out here. There's people that have never been to a women's golf tournament here, and that's a great thing for us.

Q. Were you surprised how many people are out here?
STACY LEWIS: I was, especially early, like Thursday, Friday. I knew there would be more people on the weekend, but for a Thursday, Friday, I thought that was pretty good.

Q. Are there any female celebrities that you'd like to see maybe in upcoming years?
STACY LEWIS: I don't know, but we definitely need more, I will tell you that. We'll have to -- they probably don't want to play from our tees. So we'll need the tournament to work on that a little bit. It would definitely be cool to see some females come out and feel comfortable playing.

Q. Might need to teach a few.
STACY LEWIS: I know. I was trying to come up with somebody that I knew played golf, and I didn't.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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