Early Life and Amateur Career
Creamer was born in Mountain View, California and raised in Pleasanton, the only child of an airline pilot father and stay-at-home mother. The family's home overlooked the first tee of the Castlewood Country Club's golf course. Creamer participated in acrobatic dancing and gymnastics during her childhood, and started playing golf when she was 10 years old. At the age of 12, she won 13 consecutive regional junior events in northern California, and the following year she became the top-ranked female junior golfer in the state.
During Creamer's amateur career, she won 19 national tournaments, including 11 American Junior Golf Association events, and was named Player of the Year by the AJGA in 2003. On two occasions (2002 and 2003), Creamer played on the United States team in the Junior Solheim Cup. She was a semi-finalist in the 2003 U.S. Girls' Junior and U.S. Women's Amateur, and reached the same stage of both events the following year. In June 2004, Creamer placed second in the LPGA Tour's ShopRite LPGA Classic, finishing one stroke behind Cristie Kerr. Later that year, she tied for 13th in the U.S. Women's Open and represented the United States in the Curtis Cup.
In December 2004, Creamer won the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament by five strokes to secure membership on the Tour for the 2005 season. She opted to turn professional immediately after the event at the age of 18.
Read more about this topic: Paula Creamer
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, amateur and/or career:
“We have been told over and over about the importance of bonding to our children. Rarely do we hear about the skill of letting go, or, as one parent said, “that we raise our children to leave us.” Early childhood, as our kids gain skills and eagerly want some distance from us, is a time to build a kind of adult-child balance which permits both of us room.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)
“When in a serious mood, it seems to me that those people are illogical who feel an aversion toward death. As far as I can see, life consists exclusively of horrors, unpleasantnesses and banalities, now merging, now alternating.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)