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P&G BEAUTY NW ARKANSAS CHAMPIONSHIP PRESENTED BY JOHN Q. HAMMONS

September 9, 2009

Stacy Lewis

ROGERS, ARKANSAS

JASON TAYLOR: Stacy, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to Razorback country.
STACY LEWIS: Yes.
JASON TAYLOR: This is obviously your rookie season on the LPGA Tour. So if you could talk about how you're feeling to be back down in Arkansas.
STACY LEWIS: Yeah. It's become home for me the last couple years, so it's so nice to be back and sleeping in my own bed this week.
And I don't know, it's always fun to play this golf course. It's one -- I've played since I came here in school. So even with the changes, I still know it pretty well, and it's just, I don't know, it's just good to be home.
JASON TAYLOR: Questions?

Q. Stacy, when we talked a few weeks ago, you were kind of saying how your swing, you've made a lot of changes, you've taken a few weeks of down time to really work on that. How does that translate to the course these last couple tournaments?
STACY LEWIS: It's actually been really well. I hit the ball the best that I've hit it in a good couple months. I think last week I only missed like 15 greens in 72 holes, so I'm hitting the ball much better last week.
So the greens are rolling pure, so that's what I'm looking forward to is putting on some good greens, but good changes have definitely taken shape.

Q. When you come to this tournament, it's so not normal for you, there's so many requests, so much everything going on outside of golf. Was that a distraction for you last year at all? How do you think that is? Is it tough to concentrate on your game?
STACY LEWIS: Well, thinking back to last year, I was not prepared for what was to come. It was the week after the U.S. Open, and just the magnitude of that. I wasn't prepared for it, looking back on it.
So I was looking forward to this year, because I knew what to expect. I knew what was coming, and I knew the week was going to be busy, so I slept as much as I could and rested last week, but looking back at last year, I was just not prepared for it.
I mean it showed in the way I played at the end of the week, because I was just exhausted. I didn't know how to handle it. So definitely more prepared this week.

Q. Stacy, was it a tough transition for you becoming a full-time pro player with all the travel? I mean that's gotta be difficult early on in your career. Was that kind of tough the first maybe six months or first few months doing that?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah. It was really hard just figuring out where you stay and where you fly to and where you do all these kind of things, and even getting to the golf course and knowing where the locker room is or where the driving range is or where the first tee is.
I mean, I have a lot of friends out here, where I ask people questions every week, and they probably get tired of me, but they all say, we were all rookies at one point. Everybody asks the questions.
So everybody is just so helpful, but it was hard. It was hard going from week to week and leaving the previous week's tournament, and you know, maybe you played bad on Sunday. You gotta get over it and get onto the next week, so that's something that I've had to learn to adjust to.

Q. Have you had moments where you got totally lost trying to find the course or on the course, things like that?
STACY LEWIS: Well, the hardest, I think was at Evian in France, just the language barrier, obviously, and usually you can ask a volunteer and they'll get you in the right direction, but in France not very many people spoke English, so that was really hard.
And I didn't have a car, so they transported me everywhere. And I'd get in the car and he was like, where do you want to go? And I was like, the golf course? I mean I didn't know. That was definitely the hardest, but I've started to kind of figure things out a little bit.

Q. You've played this course now so many times, but now it's a little bit different. Is it different for you the approach you're going to take this week, do you think?
STACY LEWIS: I think -- the main difference is I think you have to think a little bit more. You have to think your way around the course, instead of before you could just hit it at the greens, go at the flags and not have to worry about it. Now you've got runoffs in the water, runoffs in -- it'll come back off the front on some of the greens, and you have to think more like the layup on 18 can run into that water pretty easily. So you just have to think a little bit more, and I think it's definitely a little bit harder.

Q. Did you watch the Solheim Cup? What were you thinking watching that? And I know playing in something like that is a big goal of yours, so maybe how hard was it to watch it knowing that was a goal and you didn't get there, but try to get there the next time?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah. Everybody was asking me if I was going to watch, and I think that would have been way too hard for me. It was hard enough just watching it on TV just because I wanted to be there. But I did watch it just because I know so many of the people that were playing, and I wanted to root for them and cheer for them and kind of see how their experience was.
So I watched it, but I kind of like watched it on and off because I would get frustrated because I wasn't there. But it was definitely exciting.

Q. For a lot of people that pay attention to golf, what they saw in Michelle Wie at the Solheim was maybe kind of a break out of her personality, she kind of came out of her shell maybe. Would you agree with that or is that kind of the person she always is away from the cameras and everything?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah, I think a lot of times from week to week, not just her, but everybody, they're different people on the course than you are off. And I think with the team event it just really brought out the personalities of everybody on the team.
You don't see people try and pump up a crowd and doing that kind of thing week to week, so I mean it's great for the outside world to kind of see everybody's personalities and what they're really like.

Q. How difficult are weather delays?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah, I think it's going to be a long week again, but it's part of the game, unfortunately. We just kind of have to learn to adapt to it.
And you know, I wish the rain would hold off, but when the LPGA comes to town, the rain comes to town, so it's kind of part of the deal.

Q. Do you have to change your game plan any at all, approach it different knowing that you might have a rain delay?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah, I think you're just -- you're just a little more patient because you know it's going to be a long day. You know that it's a possibility that you might have to get your rain gear out, you gotta get your umbrella out. It's kind of a hassle. But if you prepare yourself for it early in the day, it's not as big a shock when it actually happens.

Q. (No microphone). Lorena Ochoa make it to the LPGA, have any kind of chance, would you like to play with Lorena Ochoa here?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah. I'd love to play with Lorena any chance I get. I mean I've never had an opportunity to play with her. So hopefully in the next couple years she'll come here.
I think this tournament is starting to become a better event every year, and you're getting -- good players are talking about it more early in the season and looking forward to it, so I think the more the better players can get here, the better off this tournament will be.

Q. Is it a pretty good sign to see that a lot of players are here after being up in Canada? It's kind of a long trip for some, from Alberta to here.
STACY LEWIS: I think too, it's that, and the Samsung event, which is a small field next week where all the top players are going to be out in California. So that's a hard trip, too.
So I think it says things about this tournament and how the tournament director and the sponsors have really sold this to the players, and all the functions and the events going on just make it a lot of fun for us to get to -- it's fun to do things outside the golf course and not just do your practice round, do your Pro-Am, play the game.
There's events to go to, there's clinics, the hair cutting. There's all kinds of things going on this week, so it's a lot off the golf course.

Q. Do you practice in conditions similar to this to prepare you, think, well, we might encounter strong winds, we might encounter something like this. So let's go out there and practice in the weeks prior to this?
STACY LEWIS: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's when you get better. I mean I was out putting this morning in the rain. So you have to learn how to play in it. You have to learn how to deal with it.
I think if it starts raining in practice and you leave the golf course, you're only hurting yourself. So you know if it's raining out and it's not -- I mean obviously you don't want to get out there and get soaked. That's kind of extreme, but if it's not raining too bad, I mean it's good to learn how the ball reacts when it's wet and reacts to wet greens and things like that.
JASON TAYLOR: All right? Thank you.
STACY LEWIS: All right. Thank you.
JASON TAYLOR: Good luck this week.

End of FastScripts

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