Morgan Pressel

At 18 years and 313 days, Morgan Pressel won the 2007 Kraft Nabisco Championship and became the youngest winner of a modern LPGA major, a record that stood until Lydia Ko in 2015. She had announced herself even earlier: at twelve she was the youngest qualifier in U.S. Women's Open history at the time, and at seventeen she tied for second at the 2005 Open as an amateur.

Birth and Death Dates:
b. May 23, 1988

Career Highlights:
Pressel grew up in Florida in a family where sport and Jewish life intertwined — her uncle is the tennis pro Aaron Krickstein, and after her mother Kathryn died of breast cancer in 2003, her grandfather Herb Krickstein raised her and oversaw her golf. She won the 2005 U.S. Women's Amateur, turned professional that November at seventeen, and joined the LPGA Tour in 2006.

The 2007 Kraft Nabisco was her defining week — she closed with the major title at an age no modern LPGA player had managed — and she added a second tour win at the 2008 Kapalua Classic, reaching a career-high fourth in the world ranking. Pressel became a fixture of American team golf: six Solheim Cup appearances between 2007 and 2019, with a perfect singles record through 2011, followed by assistant captaincies in 2023 and 2024 and the U.S. captaincy of the 2026 PING Junior Solheim Cup.

Her mother's death shaped her off-course life as much as her golf: the Morgan Pressel Foundation has raised millions for breast cancer research. Since March 2021 she has worked as a broadcaster, now lead analyst for Golf Channel and NBC Sports. She has said her Jewish faith "plays a large role" in her life; the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame announced her in its class of 2026, the first golfer selected in years.

Origin:
Tampa, Florida