AUSSIE RUES LACK OF COMPANY
Webb wishes there were more female compatriots among golfing’s elite
Karrie Webb has never met her Aussie compatriot Jason Day and knows nothing about his story.
“Only what you guys write,” said the LPGA’s most accomplished active player, already a World Golf Hall of Famer with 41 wins, including seven majors and a career Grand Slam of all the events that have ever been majors.
Perhaps they’ll meet a year from now at the Olympic Village in Rio de Janeiro.
Day put his toe in the major champions’ pool for the first time last Sunday at Whistling Straits after a lot of near-misses and he’s a lock for the Aussie Olympic team, but the sorts of things Webb has achieved in her career must seem untouchable to him — and perhaps they are.
So imagine how they seem to the Australian girls and women who have tried to follow the path Webb blazed, setting the women’s golf world on fire back when she was her generation’s Lydia Ko or Brooke Henderson ... with one difference.
“When I was a rookie, I was 21 and I was the youngest on Tour — now you’ve got girls petitioning the minimum age requirement to be on Tour,” Webb said Thursday, still steaming from two bogeys on her last three holes of the CP Canadian Women’s Open first round, though her 2-under-par 70 was very much in the hunt.
One of those pesky kid petitioners, Ko, led for much of Thursday at five-under-par 67 before being passed by 36-year-old Frenchwoman Karine Icher, who came in with a 65 in the day’s last group.
It’s a curious thing, though: Webb, ranked 22nd in the world, and Minjee Lee, ranked 15th, are the only Australian women in top 100 of the Rolex rankings. There are eight Aussies among the top 100 men, 16 in the top 200 and though Webb has four more majors than all of them put together, it concerns her that she doesn’t have more company from her homeland among the women’s elite.
“I still think the women’s game could get more funding in Australia. The men are going along so well, it’s kind of like ... the best part of my game today was driving, so should I go out and practise my drivers for an hour? The best part of golf in Australia is the men’s game, so let’s keep pouring money into the men’s game?” she said.
“I think we’ve had a lot of talented girls come out here. Unfortunately, there’s always been pressure to live up to what I’ve done and I think that’s too tough to ask of girls.
“I just don’t think it’s as easy as it looks and quite honestly, we could do with getting 50 per cent of the money in Australia and I think you’d see a change.” Could the Olympics change it? “Probably only if one of us wins a medal,” she said.
It doesn’t seem so long ago that Webb was being touted as the Next Big Thing in women’s golf by no less than Greg Norman, but it turns out it’s been 20 years; 15 since Norman was hitting golf balls into the crowd from atop a shark float in the Sydney Olympics’ Closing Ceremonies.
Webb took a mid-season break from the LPGA Tour to run with the torch on the eve of those 2000 Games and still barely missed out on being the first single-season $2 million money winner.
Yes, she was pretty good then. Still is. But the LPGA’s world is a lot bigger place than it used to be.
“It’s obviously an international field now, more so than when I was first out here,” Webb said. She’s not complaining.
“I don’t think we’d have a Tour if it wasn’t for overseas events. I mean, that was the only thing that kept us going there, for a few years ... the international flavour.”
That flavour is certain to intensify after golf re-enters the Olympics next summer.
“I would love to be there. I’ve still got to play well through July of next year and world rankings can change so quickly,” Webb said.
Realistically, though, she only has to maintain a modest level of play to make the 60-woman field, selected from world rankings, with a maximum of four competitors from any country.
Day is safe, though, on the men’s side. His victory at the RBC Canadian Open a month ago, followed up with his PGA Championship moved him to No. 3 in the world.
“Quite honestly, even if he wasn’t an Aussie, I think a lot of Aussies would have been cheering for him,” Webb said, “because he was almost Greg Norman-esque. In 1987, Greg led all four majors after 54 holes and didn’t win any.
“So I think it was great to see him finish it off and I love watching him play. Because one of my biggest problems sometimes is not hitting shots 100 per cent committed, but he never looks like he’s at all worried about where it finishes, he just commits to every shot.”
She didn’t, quite, down the stretch Thursday. But it would be a mistake to overlook her chances. Canada was where she won her first major, the 1999 du Maurier Classic in Calgary.
That’s a long time ago. The du Maurier is now defunct.
Karrie Webb? Not just yet.