Perfect Partnership

Paula Creamer and Kevin Craggs have teamed up this year as the former plans a return to the upper echelons of the world ranking. Thus far, everything points to a productive relationship...

- Adrian Milledge

There was a strong suggestion of the unorthodox and surreal when Kevin Craggs conducted his first coaching session with Paula Creamer, the onetime golden girl of the LPGA Tour.

Craggs, a Golf Monthly Top 25 Coach, spent a lengthy part of it watching the 31-year-old chip balls into a bunker at the exclusive Isleworth Golf Club in Florida.

This was totally at odds with what had occurred during their impromptu session prior to last year’s Evian Championship, which played a part in the 2010 US Women’s Open Champion turning to Craggs to help revive her floundering and injury-plagued career.

Acting on the advice of her caddie, California girl Creamer asked Craggs if he could resolve a long-standing problem that involved dislodging balls from a sand trap, as opposed to dunking them in it.  

“There was a specific bunker shot she always struggled with,” recalls Paul Creamer, her father. “She’d been trying to play the shot for as long as I can remember – people had tried to help her but something Kevin said clicked with her and the problem was solved in half an hour.”

As long as Paul, a retired pilot, can remember stretches back to the time when his daughter was 10 years old and took up the game, albeit with a degree of reluctance.

“I didn’t like golf at first, then all of a sudden I did,” Paula recalls. “As a kid, if you start to get good at something you start to enjoy it. I played with the boys a lot – I was the only girl – and without a doubt I wouldn’t be where I am if it wasn’t for that. They made me mentally strong and tough – they supported me like a little sister.”

The ‘little sister’ was just 12 when she started showing the boys who was boss, but one victory remains elusive.