Pine and Dandy

By Ron Sirak
Photos: J.D. Cuban July 6, 2007

Getting a handle on Cristie Kerr is a lot like playing catch with a cactus. You may be able to grasp it, but at a price. In 11 years on tour, Kerr has ticked off a who's-who list of LPGA players, but the few close to her are extremely devoted. She has a remarkable ability to say the wrong thing, mostly because when they built this woman they forgot to install the edit button. She can be extremely self-centered, perhaps because there were times in her life when she lived on an underpopulated island of one. As an amateur, she was the overweight kid with glasses from humble means trying to figure out which fork to use in the country-club world of junior golf. As a pro, she was a teenager before teens on tour were as common as long putters. Kerr is not so much from the wrong side of the tracks as she is from the middle of the tracks. The train has run over her more than a few times. Her family was torn apart by divorce and disease. A couple of engagements never made it to the altar, and, by her own admission, she was not mature enough to do and say the right thing in the grown-up world when she first turned pro at 18. Now 29, newly married and finally comfortable with the fact she is allowed to be happy, a strangely tranquil Kerr last week claimed the biggest prize in her sport--the U.S. Women's Open championship.

Perhaps it was because the moon was full Saturday, but Kerr awoke before dawn Sunday for a marathon day at Pine Needles Lodge & GC with unusual control of her emotions. Even when she and Natalie Gulbis, maid of honor in her Dec. 9, 2006 wedding to real-estate developer Erik Stevens, arrived at the fitness trailer at 5:20 a.m. only to find it not yet open she merely went to clubhouse to stretch and let the inconvenience pass without a tantrum. "She woke up at peace, and she's not like that often," Stevens said after Kerr closed with a 70 and finished 72 holes at five-under-par 279, to win her first major championship. She was two strokes better than Lorena Ochoa, the top-ranked player in women's golf, and 18-year-old Angela Park.

"We have never seen her this at ease," said Jason Gilroyed, who is in his second season as Kerr's caddie. "She loves it here. Last year she said, 'If I am going to win my first major, it is going to be [at Pine Needles].' " She did it with a remarkable putting effort, using a 33½-inch Ping G5i Craz-E she bought in a pro shop in Korea in May, and with an even more remarkable resolve when saddled with a swing as unruly as her dog, Bailey, who Kerr says "just loves to chew things" despite her sternest admonishments.

"Putting absolutely saved me," said Kerr, who was third in the field with 113 putts, eight fewer than Ochoa (who hit 55 greens in regulation to Kerr's 47). A 10-foot par putt on No. 10 and a seven-footer on No. 16 were key momentum savers in Kerr's two-birdie, one-bogey final round. "I was walking a lot of putts into the hole," she said about her tendency to move toward the cup well before the ball fell in.

"When I stepped on the grounds, it was just magic," she said about the vibes last week at Pine Needles, where she was low amateur in the 1996 Women's Open and T-4 in 2001. "Some things are just meant to happen." The calm--and the putter--were needed because the swing was out of whack. Instructor Bryan Lebedevith, who works with Jim McLean and has taught Kerr since she was 17, tinkered the entire tournament. "I was definitely fighting my golf swing," Kerr said, "but I managed to muddle through it." She muddled her way to a $560,000 check and a large trophy bearing the names of most of the greats in women's golf.

The tournament, which was thrown off schedule by lightning storms Thursday and Friday, was decided in the final threesome of Kerr, Ochoa and 19-year-old Morgan Pressel, even though Park, playing one group in front, hung tough until bogeys on Nos. 16 and 17. Kerr began the final round one stroke ahead of Ochoa, Pressel and yet another teen, Jiyai Shin, 19. Pressel, who at 18 became the youngest ever to win a major at the Kraft Nabisco Championship in March, crumbled to the ground in tears in the tunnel leading to the scoring trailer. She never got closer than two strokes after a bogey on No. 4 and finished T-10 when a 77 put her at 287. Shin, the leading money winner on the Korean LPGA this year, bogeyed two of the last four holes and shot 74 to finish at 284, alone in sixth place behind Se Ri Pak and--yup--another teen, In-Bee Park, 18, at 282. In all, there were 24 teens in the field plus 12-year-old Alexis Thompson, who shot 76-82 and missed the cut.