Morgan Pressel Is Not Afraid To Cry

And that's just one more reason the LPGA rookie makes the rest of women's golf a little nervous

Morgan Pressel cries. She cried when she lost to Michelle Wie in February. She cried after her second round at 2006's first major, in March. She cries at the mere thought of her mom. She'll invite you to ride in her car on the way to the range, then tell you to move her laptop because if you accidentally sit on it, "I'll cry … again!"

Morgan Pressel yells. She yells loud enough to rattle windows on course-side homes. She yells at her ball, her grandfather, herself. Mostly herself.

Morgan Pressel fidgets. She plays with her Treo, replaces it with an Audiovox, replaces that with a BlackBerry, then fidgets with that. Or she'll fidget with her SUV radio. Or her fork. Then she'll take the fork and stab a paper tablecloth until it's in little pieces. Which is good, since that means she isn't smacking her putter or tossing her clubs around, because she does that, too.

And Morgan Pressel talks. She talks in ways most pros are afraid to, about her support for steroids testing in golf (unless she has to take a needle), about her love of Quiznos and Clay Aiken and photography. She talks so freely and honestly, it's often hard to get a question in.

So why bother asking? What's the mystery? She's the greatest reality show not on TV, a cute, opinionated, 18-year-old blonde traveling the country with her hilarious and brilliant 72-yearold grandpa. Meet Morgan! She's smart and selfassured and treats strangers as friends, and she's got a big deal with Polo and all the gadgets a teenager could want. "I don't want to be normal," she says, and you can almost feel her fans nodding and whispering, "You tell 'em, Morgan."

She's playing for all the little girls who just adore her and all the old-school LPGA fans who love that she's doing it the "right" way. She's a burger-eating, vegetable-hating, Red Wingsloving American girl who answers your questions before you think to ask them. Miss Firecracker, as Pressel is often called—sometimes in praise, sometimes not—is so open, so emotional, so real, that she basically interviews herself. But we're here at this Italian restaurant near a tourney in Georgia, and we've got time, so here's one for the biggest teen star in women's sports not named Michelle or Maria: Are you happy? And Morgan stops fidgeting and says nothing. Sitting across from her as she fumbles for words is her best friend, a lovably blunt senior citizen named Herb—Pressel's grandfather. Is he happy? "It's hard to be happy at my age because you know you're going to die soon." And Pressel laughs hysterically. To understand Herb is to understand Pressel. A psychologist once called him "the most competitive man on the planet." To which Herb says, "I don't know. I haven't met everyone on the planet."

Herb gets his mettle from the same place Pressel almost got her name: his mother. "Myrtle didn't like it if things didn't go right," Herb says. "She was not calm." Myrtle lived in suburban Detroit and married a rabbi who didn't care much for sports. "She helped him with the competitive side of being a rabbi," Herb says. She listened to Tigers games and took her son by bus to the stadium.

There, Herb Krickstein fell in love with sports.

A few years later, he got a tryout with the Tigers, and though he failed to make the team, he passed his sports jones and soft hands to son Aaron, who became the youngest top-10 player in men's tennis history. Aaron had three sisters, all athletes, who played tennis and got a little too upset when they lost. Still, Kathy Krickstein won Big 10 championships in tennis, married another fiery sports hound, named Mike Pressel, and passed on the competitive bug to Morgan, who could do a onehanded cartwheel at 2, picked up golf at 8 and qualified for the U.S. Women's Open at 12. Morgan has a little brother, Mitchell, and a little sister, Madison, a rising golf star in her own right.

The family relocated to Boca Raton, a bunch of little Herbies going bananas: insanely competitive and insanely talented and, well, insanely insane.

Then Kathy got cancer.

Competition suddenly took on a new meaning. Herb was a pathologist, spending his life looking through a microscope, trying to avoid the smallest error. Now he was looking into the microscope at himself. But there was nothing he could have done for Myrtle, who died of cancer at 64, and there was nothing he could do for Kathy. But still. "I keep second-guessing myself," he says quietly.

Kathy fought every day, and like a true Krickstein, she thought she'd win. Pressel, another Krickstein, kept fighting her fight too. "She must have known how bad it was," Herb says, "but we didn't talk to her about it." She was called home from Sweden in September 2003 just before her mom died. Kathy was 43, Morgan 15. Later, Herb gave Morgan a letter Kathy had written to her, telling her to be happy. And to win.

"Kathy always had faith that Morgan would be a champion," Herb says. Pressel believed it. "The motivation and determination got that much stronger after she died," says Lauren Mielbrecht, a close friend of Morgan's from high school in Boca Raton who now plays at Virginia. "I truly believe Morgan gets that fight from her mom."

Which brings us to Pressel's designated rival, Michelle Wie. Morgan has stopped saying negative things about Michelle, and Michelle has never said one negative thing about Morgan, but they are as easy to contrast as Arnie and Jack. One's a piano concerto, the other a Stratocaster on 11. One spins like a tornado, the other blows like a hurricane. One is hard to hear from inches away, the other is impossible not to hear from two fairways over.

Most important, one grew up dreaming of breaking boundaries, while the other dreamed of breaking records. So while Wie thinks of herself as a "freelancer," jumping from tour to tour, Pressel has gone from high school golf to junior golf to LPGA golf. To outsiders, the paths are just different. To insiders, mainly from women's golf, the paths are wrong and right. Their meetings, meanwhile, have been nothing less than riveting. The first took place in 2003, at the U.S. Girls Junior Golf Championship. Kathy's health had deteriorated significantly, but Morgan told Mielbrecht before the match-play round, "She's got no chance."

"I'd never seen that kind of fire in her eyes," Mielbrecht says. Pressel strode to the first tee, looked the taller Wie straight in the eye and funneled all her might into a mammoth 290-yard drive. Dozens of other junior golfers flanked the rope line, cattily cheering against the PGA-dreaming interloper. They got their wish: Pressel beat Wie, 3 and 2, and watched the younger girl walk away in tears.

Which made the rematch all the more poignant—or juicy, depending on your POV. Pressel got paired with Wie for the last round of the inaugural Fields Open this February on Oahu. The night before, Wie and Pressel were the only golfers left on the putting green when word came that they would meet again.

They were circling wordlessly, following their putts and avoiding each other's lines as bystanders whispered about the next day's graphite sword fight. Finally, Pressel was told about the pairing, and her eyes lit up. "Great!" she declared. And it was great, for the hometown girl. Wie played beautifully, coming within a stroke of a playoff.

Pressel faced the same indignity Wie had three years prior, walking up the final fairway to cheers for another girl. She dissolved in tears after the round. Pressel shrugs. "Blown out of proportion," she says. "I did poorly, I was upset, I moved on." But many in Golf Nation fretted, among them former LPGA commissioner Ty Votaw, who's always been a proponent of the 18-year-old age requirement that Pressel got around after Votaw stepped down last year. (Pressel got through Q-School, and commissioner Carolyn Bivens allowed her to join the Tour at 17.) "That's why there's no crying in baseball," Votaw said a few days after the Fields.

Those who really know Pressel know this: Her waterworks have nothing to do with age or maturity. She'll cry when she's 30, just as Kathy did. But most people still don't understand why.

Witness the final round of the 2005 U.S. Women's Open, in Colorado. Pressel was tied for the lead, with a chance to win at an age when no one—man or woman—has ever won a major. She stepped to the tee at the toughest hole on the course, the par-4 18th, with water on the left and just about no chance of getting home in two. The tension was palpable, the kind of pressure under which even the most seasoned vets have wilted. Lorena Ochoa nearly missed the ball only a little while before, chunking her drive into the water. But Pressel wasn't quaking. Pressel was smiling.

Then, up ahead, she heard the roar of the crowd as Birdie Kim holed out from the bunker. Pressel threw up her hands in frustration. An NBC commentator said Pressel was "robbed." She had to hole out from the fairway to force a playoff, which she didn't do, and it was back to emotional Morgan, blubbering on the green.

But not because she couldn't handle it. "It's not immaturity," Mielbrecht says. "It's the emotion of wanting it so badly. It's just not containable."

Pressel handles pressure just fine, thank you. It's losing that gets her. Most athletes get more emotional as winning gets closer; Pressel gets calmer. Competing may be her bane, but winning is her balm. And crying is her way of letting it all out. "I wanted to win," Pressel says. "I wasn't nervous. People who are nervous might think they haven't practiced enough or there's a flaw in their swing or they're not prepared. I was prepared."

Walk along on a "friendly" round with Pressel and Herb, and you'll see how prepared she is. It's Easter morning. Atlanta is quiet. Pressel sashays in a bunker, getting set to hit a practice shot in a practice round for a tournament several days away. Herb stands on the lip, watching. She hits it thin. "Morgan!" Herb yells. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen you do!" Pressel looks up and turns bright crimson. "Papa!" she screams.

Hole 13. Pressel fires a drive into the distance. Looks good. "Why don't you take your time," Herb says, "instead of hitting a crap shot like that?" Pressel turns: "That's where I was aiming, honey!"

Hole 18. A man and a woman walk onto their patio to watch the girl hit. She does, landing it in the fairway. Herb tells Pressel to hit again, this time farther left. She does. Herb wants it left again. "Any more left," Pressel yells, "and I'd be in the water!" Herb: "Why don't you concentrate for a change?" The patio people tiptoe back inside.

But the snapping isn't about pushy oldsters or disrespectful kids. It's about winning, which is all Pressel and Herb care about. She played high school and juniors to win. She skipped college to win. Her relationship with her boyfriend ended in part because he's in college in Gainesville and she's in Maryland and Rhode Island and the U.K., trying to win. She moved out of her dad's house after Kathy died—partly because of a clash of grieving personalities, partly so she could live with her grandfather-best friend-coach and make it easier for her … to win. (Neither Morgan nor Mike will talk about the break.) Pressel chooses the terms and accepts the sacrifices. "I went to prom last year," she says. "Missing it this year is not the end of the world. I don't have a lot of friends. But I have friends from school, on Tour. It works out."

And you can't help but think that Pressel's wellbeing wouldn't be a topic of discussion if she were a guy. Tiger glares and stews, but Morgan acts like a baby. Tiger's anger is manly, but Morgan's tears are weak. We applaud Tiger for sacrificing to win but fret about Morgan's missing college and her teen years because we think she should have a normal life. Who thinks Tiger should have a normal life? Anyone? Morgan, like Tiger and Lance and MJ and Herb and Kathy, sees only winning. Getting there is fun, getting there faster more fun. And getting there at any pace is a long, hard climb. The story of her rookie season has been the fight to get to a place where she can win. She worked hard to finish high school, graduated, then faced a travel schedule that few rookies—male or female—handle easily. The result has been frequent good finishes but few great ones. She's made the top five twice in 2006.

"When you're impatient," Herb says, "that doesn't go with being happy all the time." Mielbrecht agrees: "She can't hold it in. I think it's made her great. Some people criticize her, but it's taken her above and beyond her competitors."

So the crying, the yelling, the fidgeting and the talking are all about restoring equilibrium. So is the unhappiness, really just a side effect of a greater happiness—the thrill of the chase. "I'll be happy when I know I haven't left anything out there," Pressel says, "when all parts of my game are rock solid. And I may never feel that way."

So let Pressel cry. Because a day after the Atlanta practice round, she's at the new downtown aquarium, hustling (never walking) from belugas to sharks to tiny camouflaged creatures that blend into the plankton. Another day finds her blitzing through a Polo store, grabbing items off the shelves. Or scavenging at the Callaway factory. Or taking batting practice with the Toledo Mud Hens. So don't cry for this girl, no matter how much she does. Because back at the Italian joint, she has a quick answer to one last question: When your mom looks down at you, is she happy? "I definitely think so. For sure." And that's all Morgan Pressel can get out.

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