Natalie Anne Gulbis (born January 7, 1983 in
Sacramento, CA) is an American professional golfer
who plays on the U.S. based LPGA Tour.
She started finding interest in the game at the
early age of 4. By the time she was 7 years old she
had won her first tournament. In three years when
she was only 10 years old, she could regularly break
80 and sometimes even par. (Off of the front tees).
She is of Latvian descent, her last name meaning
swan in Latvian, and was born in Sacramento,
California, and played in her first LPGA tour event
as an amateur at the age of 14. She attended Granite
Bay High School and graduated when she was 16. She
turned professional at age 18 after playing for one
season on the women's golf team at the University of
Arizona.
She did not win a tournament in the first five years
of her professional career but still finished sixth
on the LPGA money list in 2005 with over $1 million
(U.S.) in earnings and played on the winning United
States Solheim Cup team. She placed in the top-10 in
four consecutive major championships from the 2005
LPGA Championship to the 2006 Kraft Nabisco
Championship.
Her first professional win came in 2007 at the Evian
Masters where she defeated Jeong Jang in a playoff
to claim the winner's share of the $3,000,000 purse.
