On the LPGA tour, Cristie Kerr is famous for putting her foot in her mouth. Sunday at the Dinah Shore, one veteran giddily replayed some of Kerr's greatest hits. There was the time when Kerr was consoling a fellow player who was contemplating withdrawing because of back pain: "Yeah, when I was heavy my back always hurt, too." Then there was the occasion when Kerr approached a Hall of Famer who was displaying a new hairdo: "Oh, did you cut your hair? I like it so much better when it's long. When it's that short it looks kind of dykie."

So plenty of eyes were rolling after Kerr's third-round 66 at the Kraft Nabisco, when she strutted into the press room and said, "I played beautiful golf today. I mean, it was really beautiful to watch, if I do say so myself. But, you know, I feel like I deserve that. I feel like I have worked really hard, I have."

It is unwise to tempt the golf gods so brazenly. Playing in the final group on Sunday, Kerr bogeyed three of the first four holes ... and then it got really ugly. On the par-3 fifth hole she fanned her tee shot into the pond fronting the green. Instead of moving up to the drop circle, she re-teed and made an identical swing with an  identical result. After taking one more club for her third attempt, her tee shot splatted on the front of the green, and Kerr watched in horror as her ball spun back toward the water. It finally stopped a foot short of further disaster. Kerr went on to make a quadruple bogey.

You can be sure that plenty of her fellow players took notice of her freefall off the leaderboard.

(Photo: Robert Beck/SI)