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THE SOLHEIM CUP

September 9, 2005

Cristie Kerr

CARMEL, INDIANA

Q. Cristie, congratulations on your win out there today. Can you talk a little bit about your play today?

CRISTIE KERR: Well, Natalie and I played very well as well as a team this morning and didn't quite make the putts we needed to win, but Laura played great and apparently she played great again in the afternoon.

I was 3 or 4 under the 9 holes, Front 9, on my own ball, and, you know, Natalie kind of picked it up in the middle and I picked it up in the end, and we made a lot of birdies, and we had to make a lot of birdies to beat them.

Sophie was hitting it 125 yards on the par 5 and hitting irons in. We had to keep up with that. We made some big putts when we needed to and had many more opportunities to get them more down, but none of those putts went in, but it didn't matter.

Q. Open it up for some questions.

Cristie, a 5 3 deficit is not a large deficit. Do you have to guard against being too aggressive tomorrow?

CRISTIE KERR: You know, I think that we're only 2 points down, 2 matches down. I think I don't know, does anybody know what the score was at Interlachen when we ended up winning the first day?

I think it was about the same. We are looking at this as it wasn't our best day, but we're still right in it, but we're not going to change our game. I don't think the Americans by and large putted very well today, and, you know, we're only 2 matches down. We're taking very positive things away from today. We're going to get refired up for tomorrow, and, you know, we're going to go back out there and give it all we got.

Q. Cristie, both you and Natalie played twice today. Four American players played twice today, and eight played once. On the European side, they had six players play twice, four played once and two didn't play at all.

If it stays warm, which it's supposed to, will this golf course take a toll on people physically on Sunday?

CRISTIE KERR: Sorry, I was thinking about all the statistics you threw at me. I think that our team is in very good shape, and we have been training physically and mentally coming up to this tournament to know that potentially all of us could have 90 holes of golf in three days, plus the practice rounds.

I think it's going to take a toll on everybody to some degree. That's a lot of golf and a lot of very focused energy for long periods of time, so I don't think it has to do necessarily with one team over the other. So, we've got to make sure we eat enough and stay hydrated and that will take care of that.

Q. When you go out to the first tee box, what are some of the thoughts that go through your head as you're observing the scene? What are some of the things that make the Solheim Cup unique?

CRISTIE KERR: Well, I mean, the Solheim Cup is very unique because it's a team competition, and you play for your country, and my thoughts on the first tee are "pipe it right down the middle." That's basically all I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about being there for my partner and just playing the best I can.

Q. If Europe does have an advantage on length off the tee, does it shine through more on the back side?

CRISTIE KERR: There is a couple par 5s where they can cut a lot of distance off with the lines off the tees. Again, I've played so much golf right now, I'm trying to think of what holes. 15 is one of them. 11 may be one of them. It depends.

They've got some long hitters on their team. We did also, but it makes a difference. If the golf course was wet, it wouldn't quite make a difference, but because it is dry, they're flying it maybe only 15 yards past us, but it's running that much more because they're hitting some of the down slopes that are farther out from the tees. It just depends on the hole.

Q. Cristie, they dominated the closing holes, especially this morning. Is that just a matter of putting or nerves or any thoughts?

CRISTIE KERR: You really have to look at momentum and how the match is going. Once you lose that momentum, it's hard to get it back. You know, Natalie and I had a chance to go 1 up in the alternate shot in the morning, and we didn't, and we got down quick and we never got up. You really have to look at the momentum in those specific cases.

Q. Cristie, Nancy said yesterday that sometimes when good friends play together in a match play competition, it doesn't always work out.

Did you and Natalie have to bargain with her at all or talk her into letting you guys play together?

CRISTIE KERR: No, we've always played a lot together. We're great friends, and we basically threw it out there to each other saying, hey, do we have a problem playing with each other, and what would be the positives and what would be the negatives, and there were more positives than there were negatives. There were very few negatives.

We played great against them this morning. We just didn't make any putts. In alternate shots, you are either in very much sync or not, and we were kind of in between. So, they made every putt they looked at against us, but we played very well together in the afternoon.

Q. What are some of the negatives? The positives, we've seen?

CRISTIE KERR: Really the only negative is that you're trying too hard for each other. I know we basically looked that in the face and said, we don't really care about that.

Q. Do we have any more questions? Thank you Cristie.

CRISTIE KERR: Thanks a lot.

End of FastScripts.

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