CPKC WOMEN'S OPEN

August 23, 2023

Stacy Lewis

Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: All right, hello everyone. Welcome back inside the media center here at the CPKC Women's Open. I'm pleased to be joined by Stacy Lewis. Stacy, welcome back to Vancouver and welcome back to the CPKC Women's Open.

What's it like to be back?

STACY LEWIS: Thank you. It's great. I have had some good tournaments in this area, so it's nice to be back here. Obviously it's a big week. A lot going on right now. Golf is kind of pretty far down the list at the moment.

Yeah, it's great to be back. You know, tournament continues to raise the bar as far as just walking on site and all the things offered for fans and things going on around the tournament.

So yeah, it's been a good start to the week.

Q. Some of your past best finishes at the CPKC Women's Open have you been in Vancouver. Runner-up finish as well as I believe a T6 a couple years ago. Just in general what is the Pacific Northwest, I know it means a lot to you, especially with the Portland event next week, but just being back here, how exciting is that?

STACY LEWIS: Yeah, I think it's the style of golf to be honest that fits me. You got to hit it straight. There is rough. The big trees, similar to a Portland. Really shapes the holes for you, shapes shots. So it's not really a golf course you go bombing around and get away with things.

Just fits my game more than anything. I would like it to be a little warmer.

Other than that we're fine.

Q. As you said earlier, golf is kind of on the low priority at the moment. It has been a crazy couple days, crazy couple months, crazy year since being announced as Solheim Cup captain. This is your last event to solidify your 2023 team. Just what have the last couple days been like for you?

STACY LEWIS: Gosh, it's really been -- the last couple weeks now have just been busy. If I'm not doing something on the golf course I'm either doing something with my family, with my daughter, or it's emails, looking at stats, organizing things for Solheim week, looking at who is playing well, who is not, what the stats look like, figuring out the 12 on Sunday, and already starting to look at pairings, because you base that on who you're going to pick on Sunday.

So there is a lot running through my brain right now. It's hard to focus on the golf course with just all the other things that are going on. But I'm okay with that. It's been so much fun so far, just to be able to be out here week to week to talk to the girls, really know how they're playing, to knowing where their head is at, what kind of headspace they're in.

It's important to know which format you're going to put them in based on how they feel about their game as well.

So there is a lot that goes into it. It's been overwhelming and I'm hoping things settle down, but I think the next three, four weeks will be pretty crazy as well.

Q. Welcome back to Canada.

STACY LEWIS: Thank you.

Q. I'm curious, you were talking about balancing the responsibility of playing as well as captain duties. On like a day-by-day basis, tomorrow and Friday, hopefully Saturday and Sunday, what do you think that's going to look like? You'll play the round and you'll want practice time, but how do you make it all work logistically?

STACY LEWIS: I don't know. I make it all work. Perfect example, yesterday I dropped my daughter off at day care at 8:00 and didn't start my practice until noon. That is just kind of what days have looked like, and you practice time has to be more shorter, a little bit more condensed.

You know, I saw nine holes yesterday and nine holes today, so in a normal week I would've liked to have seen the whole golf course, but I'm going to rely on my caddie a little bit more this week.

As soon as I'm done here today and done practicing I've got a list of emails I need to send and things I need to work on. It's just nonstop. It is what it is right now. It's a good problem to have.

Q. Obviously it's a lot of work. What's it mean to you to be representing your country and being the captain?

STACY LEWIS: Yeah, it's a lot of responsibility. I learned from the start that I get to decide everything. We're deciding menus to the schedule of the week to what do you want to do for this, what the clothes look like, what the bag looks like.

You literally get to decide everything. It can be a little overwhelming at times, but organizationally we're in a good spot. Now it's focusing on just who is going to make the team and pairings.

But trying to get feedback from the girls, factoring all that in, making sure they're involved with it. We have calls set up for the next couple weeks. Yeah, I got a lot in my head right now spinning, a lot on my list, but we'll check things off as they come and just keep working on it.

Q. This golf course obviously hosted the men's Canadian Open a couple times; you guys are here this week. Can you speak to the golf course, what you have seen so far and what you think about it as a championship test, and the opportunity to have the LPGA Tour here as well?

STACY LEWIS: Yeah, I think it's a good golf course. I think it's a little bit tricky. Some of the lengths of holes are playing for the firmness of greens, I think you'll see the officials hopefully move some of the holes up just to -- some of the greens just aren't made for 5s and 6-irons. They're made for a little bit shorter clubs.

Hopefully officials will adjust there a little bit and make it a little bit more playable, because it's just one of those courses you can hit a good shot and it hits on a downslope and goes over the back.

It's going to be a great test. Nothing crazy under par is going to win this thing. You look back at the history here, it was single digits under par. I think you'll see more of the same.

You have to hit the irons well, hit it straight, short game. So I think it's going to test every aspect of people's games.

Q. Wonder over the last few weeks or months how many of the different possibilities for picks have gone through your head and changed just depending week to week how players are playing? And second, are you using any analytics to make your choices?

STACY LEWIS: Lots of analytics, yes. That was a push of mine from the very start. I learned that the men's Ryder Cup teams have had over the last -- I think it's three Ryder Cups -- and I wanted to figure out how we could get that for our team.

Honestly, if you gave me some people's stats without names I could probably tell you who they are. That's how much I know their games and how the style of golf that they play and how they play.

As far as the list of players, it's kind of been a thing where I've -- you know, I think to last year, I had probably 20 to 25 player and then you shrink it down to 16, and then you're now down to 13 or 14. The list has just become smaller.

A lot of it is the data for me. You can see trends, see how people are playing. It's really crazy. If you look back at somebody that wins and look back over the last few weeks, their stats start trending in the right direction. You can see when good play is coming.

I don't think anything crazy is going to happen this week. I like where we are. We have some scenarios in our head of what's going to happen. Could be some movement within the points and Rolex. In my head I don't think there will be a lot of movement.

Q. Building off Bob's question there, is there any players that have -- or possibilities that have stood out from the analytics that might have been different than what you would've expected going into it without having that analytical data available?

STACY LEWIS: I would say the one thing we have dove into with analytics is the type of grass we're playing on, which is bermudagrass in Spain. Angel is actually somebody. She's in on Rolex right now, but she is somebody that stands out on bermudagrass. She was significantly better than on other surfaces.

So that was something that was helpful. She didn't grow up on bermudagrass, so it's a little bit strange that that's the case. For some reason it is.

You know, Ally Ewing really pairs up well with everybody. It's more her style of play and the way she plays golf. She's really good for the team events and kind of who plays together.

Q. This might be a bit of a naive question, but what would allow a player to perform well with everyone versus maybe only perform well with a few?

STACY LEWIS: I don't know if we have enough time. You know, a lot of it is based on the golf course that we're going to play. We're able to input, you know, if they're hitting driver or 3-wood off the tee and what club you'll be hitting from there. We now have the data that shows who is going to birdie that length of hole.

People have trends. They make birdies with certain clubs. So it's that.

I mean, you got -- it's hard to explain. There is just consistent players. There is more variable players. And they work differently for each format.

It's more just style of golf is who pairs well together. But somebody like Ally that hits a lot of fairways, a lot of greens, very consistent, she's going to be somebody that you want pairing up with anybody just to have that stability there.

Q. And Team Europe obviously announced their team. Is there any part of analytics that might point to you selecting certain players because of how they built out their squad?

STACY LEWIS: No. I mean, with what we do, we don't pair people up -- you know, Suzann doesn't put a pairing out and then I respond. We make a list, we send it out.

There is no really matchup -- we can't really do any matchup data. We could if we went to that format at some point in the future we obviously could.

Yeah, I mean, nothing of what Suzann did yesterday changes anything of what I do.

Q. Kind of a follow-up to all this stat talk, do you feel like you have another side hustle as a statistician coming off the LPGA, or did you ever realize you would dig this deep into statistics as captain?

STACY LEWIS: I'm a numbers person. Numbers operate pretty well in my head. There is a lot of people that are smarter than me that are behind the scenes that are feeding me this data. That's been their whole goal, is to get me to learn the player stats, learn how they play.

So when I told them I could look at a sheet of paper and have player A, B, C, D and pick out whose stats were whose, that was music to their ears. That was their whole goal with this was to get my to understand their games better using stats.

Q. Overall an exciting week for you. I know a lot of things, as you said, happening off the course. Being here and having an event like this, CPKC Women's Open as a premier event to make those decisions, what does that mean to you?

STACY LEWIS: Yeah, one, I guess we need to thank everyone here for letting us do this. It does probably distract a little bit from the tournament at hand.

But you need a big event like this. We wanted this event to be a part of our picks because I feel like it's a championship event.

As far as the golf courses we play at this event year out, they're always so good, they're always a challenge. I mean, you want this to be a part of the rotation.

When so we were looking at schedule figuring out when we were going to announce our team, I just wanted to make sure this tournament was here. They've been tremendous hosts so far.

THE MODERATOR: I think other than that, we are good. Thank you, Stacy, for joining us.

STACY LEWIS: Thank you.