RANCHO MIRAGE — Brittany Lincicome was no stranger to winning on the LPGA Tour when she came to the Kraft Nabisco Championship this year. She just hadn't seen victory or even played in a final group on Sunday in almost two years, so she was a bit nervous.

“Unfortunately, I haven't been in that situation in a really long time,” Lincicome said. “So I think that was why I felt a little bit more pressure or I was a little bit more nervous because I have not been in the final group for a long time.”

The nervousness might have shown on Lincicome's game Sunday, but the 23-year-old pro may have exorcised those anxieties.

With Lincicome's Sunday victory in the Kraft Nabisco, sparked by a remarkable hybrid-club approach shot on the final hole to set up a winning eagle, Lincicome has erased at least a few of the disappointments that have haunted her since her last victory at the 2007 Ginn Open.

“It's nice to get back in there and to actually pull it out in the end and to know that I can do it,” Lincicome said of her Kraft victory. “From here on out, if I do get in that situation again, just know that I have the shot to pull it off.”

Lincicome seemed like a star on the rise in a hurry when she hit the LPGA Tour as a rookie in 2005.

Lincicome made 12 of 20 cuts that year, but in 2006 she won the HSBC Women's World Match Play tournament. The Ginn Open victory the next year gave her two victories before her 21st birthday.

But 2008 was a step back for Lincicome. She made 11 of 22 cuts for the year and had one top-10 finish.

Lincicome said it wasn't any one specific thing that turned 2008 into a disappointment.

“It was just a combination of things. It was a few injuries. It was a huge swing change. I took way too much time off in the off season,” Lincicome said.

“I bought a boat and went fishing every day. Just didn't practice as much as I should, and the swing changes, I wasn't ready when I got to Hawaii. And then it just kind of went downhill from there, if that was possible.”

The injuries, mostly nagging back and wrist problems, and the poor performances caused Lincicome to start doubting herself and struggling to overcoming the increasing number of bad shots.

Before the Kraft Nabisco, Lincicome reached out to the Vision 54 program, a program that preaches a positive attitude embodied by the concept of being able to birdie all 18 holes in a round.

Lincicome hasn't attended the Vision 54 school in Phoenix yet, but she did contact the school and ask for a few tips to get through the Kraft week.

“The things that they kind of told me were short term,” Lincicome said. “I talked to them, ‘I'm like, I need four or two things just to get me through the next four days,' and it obviously really helped.”

From singing country songs with her caddie to thinking about her dog, Lincicome tried to quickly get out of the funk of each bad shot she hit in the Kraft.

It all came together, along with the 210-yard second shot on the 18th hole, to set up the winning eagle, to give Lincicome a chance to take the tournament's traditional victory leap into the lake on the 18th hole.

It was a leap those around her said she could make when the week started.

“Earlier in the week, my dad and caddie were talking about how they were going to jump in if they had to, and every time they talked about it, it made me nervous,” she said. “You have to stop talking about it because I don't want to get ahead of myself.

“When it came down to it, I looked at Mike and said, ‘when do I get to jump in the water'. I had no idea how the presentation was going to go,” Lincicome said.