Winning for a cause

DETERMINED Stacy Lewis ended a long winless streak on Sunday and then handed over her $195,000 in winnings to help the flood relief efforts in her hometown area.

Her two biggest sponsors also stepped up, with KPMG matching her donation and Marathon Oil kicking in $1 million.

Throughout the US state, relief workers and volunteers this week have continued to survey the wreckage of homes and neighbourhoods, searching for survivors or those who died. According to the Houston Chronicle, more than 50 people are thought to have lost their lives after Hurricane Harvey lashed Texas.

Lewis said: “Honestly, I think that’s what helped me through the week, just knowing people wanted me to do well. People wanted me to win this for Houston. To do it when I added pressure to myself is a pretty good, pretty cool deal.”

The 32-year-old Lewis, from The Woodlands just north of Houston, won the Cambia Portland Classic, her 12th LPGA Tour title and first since June 2014, ending a frustrating stretch that included 12 runner-up finishes. She closed with a 3-under 69 to hold off In Gee Chun by a stroke at tree-lined Columbia Edgewater.

“I just kind of handed over control and said: ‘take me, take me to the finish line - let me know what happens, God,’” Lewis said. “It was just amazing how when you let go of the control like that how great you can play.”

Lewis embraced and kissed husband Gerrod Chadwell on the 18th green. She didn’t know he had made the trip to Oregon until he appeared on the green — after hiding out in the Golf Channel tower during the round.

“I was fine until he showed up, and then I started crying,” Lewis said. “You go through all the emotions of finishing second when sometimes it’s your fault and sometimes it’s not, and things just don’t seem to ever go your way and you get really frustrated at times.

“He went through all of that with me, and it was probably as hard on him as it was on me. So just to have him here and get to share the win with him was pretty special.”

The couple lives at the Golf Club of Houston, the site of the PGA Tour’s Shell Houston Open, in Humble.