American golfer Stacy Lewis banished the ghosts of her nightmare final round at the 2008 U.S. Open when she took the Kraft Nabisco Championship by three shots on Sunday.
The 26-year-old, whose grandfather died on the eve of the contest at Mission Hills in California, claimed the first title of her professional career in the first of four major events in the 2011 women's season.
"Everybody in the family knew that he would have wanted me to finish out this week," she told the LPGA website.
"I mean, he lived through my golf. He loved watching it on TV. He recorded it every week so he could keep watching it over and over again.
Lewis, who won an unofficial rain-shortened LPGA Tour event as an amateur in her native Arkansas in 2007, had looked set to pursue that up three years ago when she led the U.S. Open heading into the last day, but a final-round 78 ended her hopes of glory.
