NAPLES, Fla. – Cristie Kerr knows where she stands on the LPGA’s larger leaderboard.
She knows she is seven points short of the 27 points required for LPGA Hall of Fame induction.
Kerr, the defending champion at this week’s CME Group Tour Championship, would relish leaving Tiburon Golf Club six points short. A victory here would be worth more to Kerr than the $500,000 first-place check. It would come with another Hall of Fame point.
“I’ve always had a dream since I was a little girl of being in the LPGA Hall of Fame,” Kerr said. “You have to find things that inspire you if you want to keep going, traveling this much, keep pushing yourself, keep working at it.”
Kerr, 39, who is playing with a sore left knee, has won 18 LPGA titles, two of them major championships. She twisted her knee in a slip at the Evian Championship in September and is playing with the knee in a black wrap.
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The LPGA Hall of Fame may be the most difficult in mainstream sports to get into. The tour has been in existence for 67 years, and there are only 24 players enshrined. Inbee Park made it into the Hall of Fame in June, becoming the first player since Se Ri Pak in 2007 to make it.
With the LPGA forming a 10-member committee this year to review its Hall of Fame criteria and procedures, Kerr was asked if she would like to see the difficult point requirement revisited.
“I don’t know, just depends,” Kerr said. “They would have to look at the statistics for the last 20 years of how many people got in the first 10 years and how many in the last 10. Wouldn’t be a bad exploratory committee, to go into.”
Lorena Ochoa has accumulated 37 points but didn’t meet the LPGA Hall of Fame’s requirement that inductees be active tour members for 10 years. Ochoa played seven full seasons. Kerr was asked how she felt about Ochoa being excluded by the 10-year rule.
“I think they have to look at that, too,” Kerr said. “It is possible that somebody could make it in five years, if they’re an uber phenom. I think they definitely have to let Lorena in, in my opinion.”