ROGERS - Opening the Stacy Lewis portion of Thursday’s news conferences for the LPGA Wal-Mart Northwest Arkansas Championship, the moderator lightly laced an opinion with her question to the former NCAA champion from the University of Arkansas.
The best among the LPGA Tour are assembled at Pinnacle Country Club for the three-day tournament that concludes Sunday.
“What,” asked the moderator, “is it like to be back in Arkansas and getting to play a LPGA event before like a hometown crowd?”
As velvety smooth as her game, Lewis politely yet distinctly corrected the moderator.
“It is a hometown crowd,” Lewis said. “It’s not like a home town. It is home town for me.”
It’s a home town incomparable to anybody’s home town, Lewis said. Though born in Ohio and raised in Texas, Lewis has been whole hog Arkansas ever since her 2004-2008Razorbacks tenure. Around Pinnacle, her name has constantly been called with the Hogs.
“It really feels like home, and nobody else on the tour has this,” Lewis said. “I don’t think we have any other stop where you have so many people pulling for one person. All the players joke they know where I am on the golf course.”
The attention isn’t just in Arkansas. There seems to be no tournament on earth where somebody’s Arkansas’ eyes aren’t upon Lewis.
“I feel like everywhere I go there are Arkansas fans,” Lewis said. “We were in Australia and there was aguy walking around with an Arkansas shirt on.”
Lewis’ current reception five years after completing her college career at Arkansas seems a testament to her pro career that for a spell saw her ranked No. 1 in the world and includes a victory at the 2011 Nabisco Tournament, the LPGA’s equivalent to the PGA Tour’s Masters.
Even more, it’s a testament to Arkansas’ love affair for its Razorbacks regardless of gender or sport.
UA men’s college golf - and even more so women’s college golf - is a niche sport performed by players who seldom (most years never) play a college match inside Arkansas.
Yet when it comes to their Razorbacks, some Arkansas fans may not always exactly understand how the great ones did it outside of football and basketball but always respect and relish it.
Lewis’ reception at Pinnacle isreminiscent of another ex-Razorback champion’s reception at his Arkansas pinnacle.
Mike Conley, the nine-time NCAA triple jump-long jump champion during his 1982-85 days for retired track coach John Mc-Donnell’s first NCAA champions, was honored on the Fayetteville Square in 1992 when he returned home after winning the triple jump gold medal in the Olympics.
Conley volunteered his medal to be passed among the crowd with no fear it would not be returned.
And, of course, it was returned.
Lewis probably could start passing around her Nabisco Trophy on the second tee and know it would be handed back to her upon putting out on No. 18.
“That’s what makes this place different,” Lewis said of Arkansas’ love for its athletes inspiring athletes’ love to represent Arkansas. “I do feel like I am carrying that torch around.”
Sports, Pages 20 on 06/22/2013