Cristie Kerr (born October 12, 1977 in Miami,
Florida) is an American professional golfer who
plays on the LPGA Tour.
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.
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, but 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 ten 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.
Kerr's reported best friend on tour is Natalie
Gulbis, and Donald Trump is an off-course friend.
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 clubs, Kerr uses
Titleist Pro V1 brand golf balls, and is also
sponsored by FootJoy and clothing manufacturer
Lacoste.
