KAHUKU — "A win is a win," Paula Creamer told a Golf Channel interviewer by rote moments after winning the SBS Open at Turtle Bay yesterday.

It must have been the adrenaline talking or the lack of oxygen at the stratospheric heights to which her relief had soared because this one was clearly more than just any old victory. Much more.

When her pink-streaked shoes finally touched down on planet Earth, Creamer fully grasped the magnitude of her third — and biggest — tournament victory.

This was certainly about more than the winner's check, $165,000, that came with the 9-under-par 207 that was good for a dramatic one-stroke victory, holding off Julieta Granada in the first full-field event of the LPGA season.

For it had been 19 months since Creamer had last won an LPGA event. Thirty-six tournaments, if you're counting. And, be assured she — and a lot of others — were.

In the life of this 20-year-old, that's a long time. Especially for one so talented and from whom so much is expected. And make no mistake about it, after her rookie-of-the-year showing in 2005, a campaign in which she won two LPGA tournaments, two international events and finished second on the yearly money list to be heralded as a power on tour, an 0-for-2006 was a disappointment. Even if a wrist injury had a lot to do with it.

Questions about her sophomore slump carried over to this year to the point that one magazine projected her as a leading candidate for its "most disappointing" finish this year, too. And when a five-stroke lead through the front nine quickly evaporated to one after 15 holes, the import of this tournament and, indeed, this opportunity mushroomed.

At that point she knew full well the length of her championship drought and the corner it had backed her into. "I hadn't been in (championship) situations for a while and was kinda rusty," Creamer acknowledged. "I think that's why, for a while, things were kind of going all over the place."

The self-described "roller-coaster ride" in a wind so fierce it forced pine trees to bow, was enough to make Creamer grip her putter firmly by its throat and lecture its head on the 15th hole, where a putt saved par and the lead. "Putting it in its place," as she termed it. It was enough, too, that after she sank a putt on 18 to assure the victory, Creamer bent at the knees in relief and put the putter in her teeth length-wise like a rose.

All to illustrate what she eventually called, "a relief off my shoulders" with her first win since the Evian Masters of 2005 and most important win of her career to this point.

While the victory itself was in doubt until the close-out putt on the 18th, there would be no doubt of its importance.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.