Rancho Mirage, Calif. – The knock against women’s golf, particularly when LPGA players are compared to their PGA Tour brethren, is that it really doesn’t compare – too many mistakes and missed putts, too little charisma and drama.
But that hoary canard might have been laid to rest Sunday in the final round of the Kraft Nabisco Championship. An afternoon that featured more turns than an autobahn and more plot twists than a Grisham novel, reached its breathless finish when Karrie Webb holed a 6-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole to defeat Lorena Ochoa.
“It’s hard to say that this is the biggest victory of my career or whatever,” said Webb, the winner here in 2000 and the owner of seven major championships. “But it’s definitely the one, 30 or 40 years from now when I’m thinking about my career, that will stick out in my memory.”
The shot that will stand out is a pitching wedge Webb struck from the fairway on the 18th hole. Her ball, which was 116 yards from the pin, nestled into the cup for eagle, closing out a dazzling final-round 65 and a 9-under-par 279 for the tournament. Playing two groups behind Webb, Ochoa, who opened the tournament by tying a major-championship record with a 62 and carried the lead after each of the first three rounds, forced the playoff by making an eagle on 18.
When the day began, there was virtually no one at Mission Hills Country Club who gave Webb a chance at victory. That’s because, despite her impressive résumé, a win like this seemed out of Webb’s grasp of late. The Australian, who won four times in her 1996 rookie season and now has 31 overall, didn’t gain a single victory last season. The last time she’d won a major was in 2002.
Eclipsed by Annika Sorenstam in the rankings and supplanted by kids such as Michelle Wie and Paula Creamer in the public eye, Webb says she never entered a tournament without thinking she could win, but admitted the “demons” that had creeped into her bag made it increasingly hard.
“I kept wondering when I was going to go into a tournament feeling good about my game,” Webb said.
Beginning the day seven shots behind the leader, Webb had closed to within striking distance of the youthful golfers in front of her at the turn, moving just five shots behind Natalie Gulbis (23 years old) and four behind leaders Ochoa (24) and Wie (16).
“I told myself that I was the one who’d supposedly had done this before, that I was one with all this experience,” said Webb, 31. “They weren’t going to blitz the back nine. I just wanted to put up a number and see what happened.”
But even after Webb’s Hail Mary, there could have been a four-way playoff. Gulbis and Wie finished tied for third one shot back, but each had a chance to tie on 18. Gulbis missed a birdie putt from about 15 feet. Wie, who had taken the lead briefly on the 13th and 17th holes, gunned a chip for eagle (which would have given her the victory) some 10 feet past the pin. She then missed her birdie putt, one of a number of putts throughout the day that could have put her in command of the tournament and ultimately her first career triumph.
“I thought it was going in as soon as I hit it,” Wie said of the putt on 18. “The whole day I was missing it on the low side, but this one felt so good. I guess I’ll just win later on.”
Ochoa carried a three-shot advantage into the day but lost that by the end of the front nine. She then fell three strokes back with three holes to play.
At that point, it appeared Ochoa was in line for another in a string of disappointing final rounds. But she rallied impressively, getting a birdie on the 16th, then making her eagle putt from 8 feet on the 18th.
That comeback is likely something that will help Ochoa in future years, but Sunday evening everything that had transpired was still a blur.
“Everything happened so fast,” said Ochoa, who had tears in her eyes as the echoes of Webb’s victory celebration rang in her ears. “I wasn’t worried about Karrie or looking at leaderboards. I just wanted to focus on hitting the fairway, but it was hard.”
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or at acotton@denverpost.com.
