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Cristie Kerr Biography

Cristie Kerr
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cristie Kerr
2009 LPGA Championship - Cristie Kerr (2).jpg
Cristie Kerr at the 2009 LPGA Championship
Personal information
Born October 12, 1977 (age 32)
Miami, Florida, U.S.A.(1977-10-12)
Height 5 ft 3 in (1.60 m)
Nationality  United States
Residence Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.A.
Spouse Erik Stevens (since 2006)
Career
College none
Turned professional 1996
Current tour(s) LPGA (joined 1997)
Former tour(s) Futures Tour (joined 1996)
Players West Tour (joined 1996)
Professional wins 16
Number of wins by tour
LPGA Tour 12
Futures Tour 1
Other 3
Best results in LPGA Major Championships
(Wins: 1)
Kraft Nabisco C'ship T2: 2009
LPGA Championship T5: 1999, 2006
U.S. Women's Open Won 2007
Women's British Open T2: 2006
Achievements and awards
LPGA Komen Award 2006
Cristie Kerr (born October 12, 1977 in Miami, Florida) is an American professional golfer who plays on the LPGA Tour.

Amateur career

Kerr started playing golf at the age of eight. She had a very successful amateur career, won the 1994 Junior Orange Bowl International Golf Championship and was the 1995 American Junior Golf Association Junior Player of the Year.In 1996 she played in the Curtis Cup and was the low amateur at the U.S. Women's Open. She graduated from Miami Sunset High School in West Kendall, Florida.

Professional career

Kerr turned professional in 1996, playing on both the Futures Tour and Players West Tour. Her first professional victory came at the Ironwood FUTURES Classic in 1996. Late in 1996 she tied for sixth at the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament to gain exempt status for 1997. Her LPGA career started fairly slowly. It took her three years to make the top fifty on the money list. In 2002 she won for the first time on the LPGA at the Longs Drugs Challenge. By 2004 she was one of the leading players on the tour, with three tournament victories, and a fifth place finish on the money list. She won two tournaments in 2005 and moved up to third on the money list. She tied for second at the 2000 U.S. Women's Open matched by her performance in the 2006 Women's British Open. Her first win of 2006 came at the Franklin American Mortgage Championship where she posted a tournament-record score of 19 under par. To date, Kerr has 12 wins on the LPGA Tour. In 2006, she was the only American to win more than one event on the LPGA Tour, winning three times. (Americans won only seven of that year's 33 events.) In 2007, she won the United States Women's Open Championship, her first major championship. She was also a member of the United States Solheim Cup team in 2002,2003,and 2005.
The hallmarks of Kerr's game are putting; she finished in the top 5 on the LPGA Tour in putts/greens hit in 2005 and 2006 and iron play. She was 5th in greens-in-regulation in 2005. She is also among the longest hitters on the tour, though the other players have caught up to her in recent years. In 2003, Kerr switched to newer Callaway Golf equipment after playing with the same clubs for the previous seven years, and the move coincided with a sharp increase in wins and earnings on tour. In 2005, Kerr finished in the top 10 in half of the tournaments she entered, and ranked second in the LPGA in scoring average, trailing only Annika Sörenstam.

Breast cancer activist

Kerr is actively involved in fundraising for breast cancer research.
The LPGA and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation awarded Kerr the 2006 LPGA Komen Award[9] due to her dedication to find a cure for breast cancer through the foundation that she founded called Birdies for Breast Cancer. Kerr donates $50 per birdie. As of August 2009 she has raised over $750,000 through donations and an annual charity event.[10] Kerr created the foundation in honor of her mother, Linda, who has been her inspiration. The foundation was created in 2003, the year that her mother Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer.[9]
Kerr is 5'3"/1.60 m and now weighs 125 pounds (8 stone 13 pounds; 57 kg), but in 1999 she weighed 175 pounds (79 kg), a weight that caused her to have back spasms. Her parents, who are divorced, are both diabetics, and her mother had a heart attack when Kerr was in ninth grade. After her weight had peaked, Kerr began exercising regularly and went on a diet. By 2002, she had lost 50 pounds.[11]

Off-course activities

Kerr's friends on tour include Natalie Gulbis and Morgan Pressel, and Donald Trump is an off-course friend.[12] Kerr made an appearance on an episode of the third season of Trump's television series The Apprentice in 2005. In 2006, Kerr married Erik Stevens, who heads up a company that is developing a sports complex in Brooklyn, New York. Kerr and Stevens maintain residences in Scottsdale, Arizona and New York City. Her primary sponsor is Mutual of Omaha which donates money to her breast cancer research foundation as part of their sponsorship agreement. In addition to her Callaway irons, Kerr uses Scratch Golf Wedges Titleist Pro V1 brand golf balls, and is also sponsored by FootJoy and clothing manufacturer Lacoste.

Professional wins (16)

LPGA Tour (12)

LPGA Majors are shown in bold.

Futures Tour (1)

Other wins (3)

Major championships

Wins (1)

Year Championship Winning Score Margin Runner(s)-up
2007 Women’s U.S. Open -5 (71-72-66-70=279) 2 strokes United States/Brazil Angela Park, Mexico Lorena Ochoa

Results in LPGA majors

Tournament 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
Kraft Nabisco Championship DNP CUT DNP DNP DNP T35
LPGA Championship DNP DNP CUT CUT T5LA WD
U.S. Women's Open CUT T36LA DNP 60 CUT T2
du Maurier Classic DNP DNP CUT T54 T17 CUT
Tournament 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Kraft Nabisco Championship T66 T3 T11 T5 T3 T35 T20 T21 T2
LPGA Championship CUT T41 T34 T17 T33 T5 T18 T10 T31
U.S. Women's Open T4 T32 T13 T27 T10 T28 1 T13 T3
Women's British Open CUT T29 T14 T11 T5 T2 T33 6 T8
DNP = did not play
CUT = missed the half-way cut
LA = Low Amateur
WD = withdrew
"T" = tied
Green background for a win. Yellow background for a top-10 finish.

LPGA Tour career summary

Year Tournaments
played		 Cuts
made		 Wins 2nd 3rd Top 10s Best
finish		 Earnings ($) Money
list rank		 Scoring
average		 Scoring
rank
1997 27 14 0 0 0 0 T15 49,058 112 73.44
1998 26 17 0 0 0 1 T4 88,613 74 72.89
1999 23 16 0 0 0 3 T5 177,978 47 72.09
2000 24 23 0 2 1 8 T2 530,751 15 71.94
2001 23 18 0 0 2 5 3 373,947 28 72.26
2002 26 22 1 1 3 8 1 685,393 12 71.47
2003 23 21 0 2 2 8 T2 696,097 13 70.69
2004 24 22 3 2 0 11 1 1,189,990 5 70.33 4
2005 22 20 2 2 4 11 1 1,360,941 3 70.86 2
2006 26 26 3 3 0 19 1 1,578,362 5 70.07 3
2007 22 19 1 0 1 6 1 1,098,921 6 71.88 17
2008 26 26 1 1 0 11 1 1,108,839 10 70.88 5
2009 25 25 1 1 2 13 1 1,519,722 2 70.28 3
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