Stacy Lewis calls it a career in hometown Houston at Chevron Championship

HOUSTON (AP) — Stacy Lewis was expecting the tears Friday when she finished her 18-year career on the LPGA Tour, which included two majors among her 13 titles and a rise to No. 1 in the world.

They mainly were for her father, Dale, who caddied for her on the 18th hole at Memorial Park, one last father-daughter walk up the fairway and into retirement.

“I probably shouldn’t have looked at my dad,” Lewis said after rounds of 79-77. “I guess my emotions are probably a lot different than theirs. They’re probably a little bit more sad, where I’m just ready. I’m ready for the next chapter and ready to stop grinding over 8-footers.”

Lewis, who has a 7-year-old daughter, played her final LPGA event while pregnant with her second child. She was exempt to The Chevron as a past champion. She won her first title 15 years ago at this major when it was the Kraft Nabisco at Mission Hills in California.

Her other major came on the Old Course at St. Andrews, when Lewis put on a clinic on long irons on links golf and superb putting across the double greens.

That was the signature moment during a stretch when she became the first American in nearly 20 years to be LPGA player of the year in 2012, and early in 2013 rose to No. 1 in the the women's world ranking for the first time.

Her husband, Gerrod Chadwell, is the women's golf coach at Texas A&M and caddied for her this week until handing over to the bag to Dale Lewis.

She thought it was only fitting that she close out her career in her hometown.

“I just think back to the kid in high school wearing a back brace and being told I have to have surgery, to 25-plus years later to still be playing golf, to be doing it at this level, to have accomplished what I did,” she said. "I mean, it’s really kind of a fairytale. I don't think anyone would have predicted any of this.”

Just reaching the LPGA was somewhat of a miracle.

Lewis was diagnosed with scoliosis when she was 11, so severe that she wore a back brace for 18 hours every day from age 11 until she got out of high school, and then had to have surgery when that didn’t correct the curvature in her spine.

Her orthopedic surgeon in Houston, Gary Brock, had planned to insert two rods in her back. But in the months leading to the surgery, Brock went to a charity event, bought a raffle ticket and won a series of lessons with a golf pro who had worked with Lewis.

That's when the doctor realized Lewis was more that a recreational player. So he suggested a single rod for the surgery to allow her more flexibility and rotation. Because of that raffle ticket, Lewis went on to play at Arkansas, win an NCAA title and enjoy a distinguished LPGA career.

Her last win was in 2020 at the Ladies Scottish Open, and Lewis went on to be Solheim Cup captain twice and playing on four U.S. teams.

And then the final act for Lewis, 41, was a day with family and friends, and a walk with her father.

“We were just talking about the golf course today and how it played, all the fairway woods I’ve hit into greens this week. Tried to keep it pretty casual,” Lewis said. “I knew he was going to be a little bit more emotional, so I had to finish out the round.”

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Stacy Lewis is greeted by her daughter Chesnee on the 18th green after the second round of the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Friday, April 24, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Stacy Lewis is greeted by her daughter Chesnee on the 18th green after the second round of the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Friday, April 24, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Stacy Lewis walks off the 18th green after the second round of the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Friday, April 24, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Stacy Lewis gets a hug from her caddie and father Dale on the 18th hole after the second round of the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Friday, April 24, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian authorities said Friday they have arrested a former intelligence officer who appeared in a video leaked four years ago that purportedly showed him and his comrades fatally shooting dozens of people during the country’s civil war.

Amjad Yousef was arrested in the central province of Hama, where he had been hiding, the Interior Ministry said, and posted a photo of him in a striped prison uniform.

Since insurgents ousted former President Bashar Assad in December 2024, dozens of members of his security agencies that were blamed for atrocities during the conflict have been arrested. Assad fled to Russia.

The conflict, which began with anti-government protests in March 2011 before turning into a civil war, left half a million people dead and over 1 million wounded.

Yousef was one of several Syrian security agents who authorities said appeared in a video leaked in 2022, in which dozens of blindfolded, bound men were shot and thrown into a trench.

U.S. special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack posted on X that the arrest was "a powerful step away from impunity toward accountability, exemplifying the new paradigm of justice emerging in post-Assad Syria: one rooted in the rule of law, national reconciliation, and the equal application of justice regardless of past affiliations.”

The 6 minute and 43 second clip shows members of Syria’s notorious Military Intelligence Branch 227 with a line of around 40 prisoners in an abandoned building in Tadamon, a suburb of Damascus near the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk. For much of the war, the district was a front line between government forces and opposition fighters.

The prisoners were blindfolded, with their arms tied behind their backs. One after another, the Branch 227 gunmen stand them at the edge of a trench filled with old tires, then push or kick the men in, shooting them as they fall.

In the video, the intelligence agents tell some of the prisoners that they are going to pass through a sniper’s alley and that they should run. The men tumble onto the bodies of those who went before them. As bodies pile up in the trench, some still move, and the gunmen shoot into the pile.

The gunmen later set the bodies on fire, presumably to erase evidence of the massacre.

Last year, security forces in Syria said that they arrested three people involved in the same killings.

The Interior Ministry said in its statement Friday that authorities will go after all those involved in the Tadamon shooting to bring them to justice.

In March 2023, the U.S. State Department banned entry into the U.S. of Yousef, his wife and immediate members of his family.

Protesters and relatives of victims of the killings known as the Tadamon massacre gather to demand the execution of Amjad Yousef, a former intelligence officer allegedly linked to the killings, after the Interior Ministry announced his arrest, in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, Friday, April 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)

Relatives of victims of the killings known as the Tadamon massacre gather to demand the execution of Amjad Yousef, a former intelligence officer allegedly linked to the killings, after the Interior Ministry announced his arrest, in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, Friday, April 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)

Protesters and relatives of victims of the killings known as the Tadamon massacre gather to demand the execution of Amjad Yousef, a former intelligence officer allegedly linked to the killings, after the Interior Ministry announced his arrest, in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, Friday, April 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)

FILE - This frame grab from a 2013 video, shows a Syrian soldier firing into a large pit full of bodies, in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo, File)