Princess at Play

The walk says a lot. Morgan Pressel strides across a restaurant in four-inch black Ralph Lauren heels with the same take-no-prisoners strut she exhibits stalking a fairway in soft spikes. Walking behind Pressel, you feel like you could draft her, NASCAR-style. The walk is not the only manifestation of her personality. Pressel is aggressive, outgoing and efficient at whatever she does: driving around town, attending a charity event, or having dinner at a restaurant. She does it all at level 11 on a 10-point scale.

The feisty 20-year-old also has considerable yakking skills. Pressel's got the power schmooze going nonstop in her daily rounds. She gives a running play-by-play on everything within her considerable peripheral vision. She makes a left turn and says to the car in the other lane, "There's no way you're gonna beat me, M5." She belts out a song with Natasha Bedingfield that's on the radio while cruising a parking lot, noting the size of each space, scoping for one where her new Mercedes 550SL is least likely to get scraped. When she walks through the mall in Boca Raton (practically her second home) or sits down at a table at Morton's, she constantly runs into people she knows—the secretary from her old school, a friend of her uncle's—and can't resist a chat. This impulse holds true wherever she is. "Here's a perfect example," says her best friend, Lauren Mielbrecht, who first met Pressel seven years ago at a junior tournament. "For my birthday she got me the MacBook laptop so we could iChat anywhere, anytime." You start to feel that Pressel is as much mayor as major winner.

Up close, her beauty supersedes her brashness. The long, blond hair flows freely—no cap, no ponytail; her skin is flawless, and her smile is a knockout (the result, she's happy to tell you, of thousands of dollars worth of orthodontia). Off the course, black is usually her color of choice, from car to clothes. Short black Ralph dress, cropped black leather Ralph coat, a dash of black liner under her green eyes.

Maybe the most interesting thing about this young woman has nothing to do with golf: At 20, she's mastered lessons that it takes most people 40 years to learn. "She grew up real fast when her mom passed away," says her uncle Aaron Krickstein, referring to his sister Kathy, who died of breast cancer when Morgan was 15. (Pressel lives with her maternal grandparents, Herb and Evelyn Krickstein.) Everyone in the family agrees that Pressel inherited her mother's drive, spirit and work ethic. She doesn't need to be told how to succeed or why she should stop and smell the hibiscus. "My mom would always tell me to try 150 percent on everything," Pressel says. "She was ultracompetitive and very supportive of my golf and school. I couldn't come home with a bad grade. That's why I never had a detention. There's a reason why I don't drink. I'd have gotten kicked out of the house. I never went to a party in high school. I've always lived a different life from my friends."

This may explain why Pressel can't give a little; she can only give her all—and why sometimes her emotions get the best of her. "A reporter once asked me, 'If you could trade places with anyone in the world, who would it be?' I thought and I thought, and I could honestly not think of anybody," she says without a trace of ego. So what else is there to know about Pressel? More than you think.

1. Papa knows best. It's been said that Pressel's grandfather, Herb, discovered her natural golf swing while watching a home movie in which 8-year-old Morgan was wielding a plastic club (Herb says he doesn't remember for sure). Though Pressel was a tennis player by DNA (her mom was a Big Ten tennis champ at the University of Michigan and her uncle Aaron was once ranked No. 6 in the world), "Papa" had other ideas. "He kind of took me out to the range, and though I was decent, he told me I was too slow for tennis," she offers with a laugh. "I said, 'Thank you very much.'"