Establishing herself as the real thing took Kerr a long time. She went 135 LPGA events before she got her first victory. Now she has 10 and a major championship. With that résumé it is difficult to believe she once had a reputation as someone who couldn't close out a tournament. And looking at her 5-foot-3, 125-pound, well-muscled frame ("I'm probably about seven pounds heavier than that now," she admitted. "Hey, I got married. I'm allowed to be happy.") it's difficult to believe in 1999 she weighed 175 pounds.
Pivotal putt: Kerr took the lead for good Sunday with an 18-foot birdie at No. 14.
That was also the year in which her diabetic parents, Michael and Linda, divorced. Linda, a legal secretary, had a heart attack when Cristie was in ninth grade, and in 2003 was diagnosed with breast cancer, which is currently under control. Michael, a teacher, had a reputation among the junior-golf crowd as an overbearing stage parent pushing his daughter into the spotlight. "When you meet them," one person close to Kerr said about her parents, "you understand her intensity." What Kerr is now is a smart, stylish woman who calls Donald Trump a friend.
Asked if she feels slighted when her name does not come up when the conversation turns to the top young golfers--like Pressel (who was one of Kerr's bridesmaids), Wie and Paula Creamer--Kerr says: "Maybe not slighted but overlooked a little bit" adding that she understands the fascination with "cute young American girls with ribbons in their hair."
Sitting with the U.S. Open trophy at her feet, Kerr was unusually at ease with reporters, whom she dismissed after play was suspended Saturday night by saying, "I'm answering two questions and then I'm boogieing out of here," and then doing exactly that.
"I respect you guys a whole lot," she said, then adding with perfect comic timing, "and don't overlook me anymore." Perhaps aware that her honesty has at times been misunderstood she said, "I was being sassy. I made you laugh. I'm quite funny if you get to know me."
Not many have gotten to know Kerr, in part because early in her career she said and did things that pushed them away. Now at a place in her life that is far removed from those difficult days, golf has become exactly what Michael Kerr had in mind for his daughter all along--an escape from her background. A mellow Cristie Kerr? Maybe it was the full moon, but maybe she really is in a very different place in her life--a place that now includes the U.S. Women's Open trophy.
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