This week in the Southern Californian desert the LPGA plays the first of its five major championships and whilst Tiger Woods back operation has diverted some attention, the Kraft Nabisco is a hugely significant event for the best women players in the world. Karrie Webb already has won twice this season and leads the money list, ahead of the generation who had seemingly passed her by. A whole group of talented Koreans are a huge force in the women’s game and young Americans including Lexi Thompson, Jessica Korda and Michelle Wie play with power rarely seen. That Webb is still capable of beating them is a testament to hard work, playing for the love of the game and a wonderful golf swing that has passed the ultimate examination, the test of time. Australia and New Zealand too have a not insignificant threesome of teenagers here this week. Sixteen- year- old New Zealander Lydia Ko is already the fourth ranked player in the world having twice won the Canadian Open and she sits in the top ten of the money list after only a few months as a pro. Almost immediately after turning pro Ko switched from her childhood, New Zealand based, teacher to David Leadbetter the famous Zimbabwean coach and the man who guided Nick Faldo through his mid-career swing change. Ko and Leadbetter is here this week working on the swing and she plays with uncommon accuracy and, as she grows, not insignificant length. It is tricky work for a teacher no matter how famous and as Leadbetter said long ago, I knew working with Faldo was a great opportunity but if I messed him up I knew my career was over. Minjee Lee from Royal Fremantle and Metropolitan s Su-Hyun Oh play this week in their first major championship and both come here after playing some really good golf at Lake Karrinyup last week. Oh s four round 274 total beat Lee by shot but this week they find a course quite different from Karrinyup. In Perth the fairways are wide because Alex Russell, Alister MacKenzie s design partner in Australia, believed in exactly the same things MacKenzie preached. One of them was the game was better played with an absence of rough grass thus eliminating the annoyance of looking for lost balls and both Royal Melbourne and Karrinyup exemplify perfectly the principles of width and strategic golf. At Mission Hills all the fairways seem to be the same relatively narrow and predictable thirty yards wide . Certainly they all play the same width and the middle of the fairway is the place to aim. At Royal Melbourne and Karrinyup the middle of the fairway is rarely the ideal place to play from. The first cut of rough is exactly the same height and consistency and so is the longer grass beyond. American tournament golf is based on fairness and predictability of outcome and here the superintendent has delivered perfectly. Driving straight will be the order of the day. Webb played a couple of nine hole practice rounds with the girls, patiently and thoughtfully answering all their questions about the course and how to manage life on the tour. Passing down knowledge and experience was always been the way of Australian golf since the days of Norman Von Nida and his mentoring of Peter Thomson and then countless others. Thomson too was a terrific source of advice and so on down the line it has gone and in the women’s game there is no best source of insight and wisdom than Karrie Webb. Perhaps there is no one more likely to win this week.
Author: Mike Clayton / golf.org.au at Kraft Nabisco