Lately, No One Is on a Par With Australia’s Webb

Who is golf’s hottest player?

The first name that springs to mind, of course, is Jeff Maggert, who topped a field of the world’s top 64 players last weekend to collect a $1-million payday in the Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship at La Costa.

But how about Karrie Webb?

The long-hitting Australian, whose hobbies include skydiving and driving dragsters in celebrity events, roared to a record-setting victory in the Australian Ladies Masters, producing the best four rounds ever shot by a woman.

Her 26-under-par 262 at Royal Pines Resort on Australia’s Gold Coast took three shots off the 72-hole LPGA Tour mark shared by Se Ri Pak, Wendy Ward and Lisa Walters while falling only two shots shy of the men’s all-time record set last year by John Huston at the Hawaiian Open.

“There was nothing we could do,” said runner-up Janice Moodie of Scotland, who had only one bogey during the tournament but still lost by 10 strokes. “Karrie was incredible.”

Webb’s wondrous run caught the eye of Presidents Cup captain Peter Thomson, who watched on television at his home in Melbourne.

“She has the potential to dominate the women’s game for quite some time,” the five-time British Open champion told an Australian reporter. “She has no weaknesses. I wish I had her on the Presidents Cup team. She’d give the men something to think about. She has proved that she is head and shoulders above the rest.”

Webb, 24, has been nothing if not consistent since joining the LPGA Tour in 1996, when she became the first player in LPGA history and the first rookie on either the LPGA or PGA tour to reach the $1-million mark in single-season earnings.

LPGA veterans Laura Davies and Jane Geddes have called her the world’s best ball-striker.

Webb, though, was unhappy with her putting and late last year switched to a cross-handed grip.

The results speak for themselves. She was runner-up by a stroke to Kelly Robbins in the season-opening Healthsouth Inaugural, tied for seventh a week later and won her last two events.

“I did not think I had much to lose,” said Webb, whose 1998 season was her least lucrative on the LPGA Tour but still placed her fourth on the money list. “I had to try something. I did not think of it as something negative, although the thought went through my mind that years back, in the mid-1980s, that if a player went cross-handed, you thought it was the end of her career because of the yips.

“Now a lot of people are putting cross-handed. Even some of the putting gurus are teaching young kids to do it.”

With her victory Sunday, Webb has won 11 tournaments but is still seeking her first major.

“I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself,” she said after being doused with champagne by her sister, “but that’s my main goal, that’s the next step for me.”

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES . . .

When Maggert said on entering the interview room late Sunday at La Costa, “You don’t have to ask me what it feels like to finish second this week,” he was talking to reporters.

But he could have been addressing an even harsher critic: His 10-year-old son, Matt.

“My son has been giving me a hard time about finishing second,” said Maggert, who has been runner-up 13 times since 1993, when he recorded his only other PGA Tour victory. “But he’s been an inspiration to me the last few years, because he does get on me.

“It’s not, ‘Oh, Dad, I’m sorry you finished second.’ It’s, ‘Dad, how come you can’t win?’ ”

Or worse.

After defeating Nick Price in the second round at La Costa, Maggert called his son in Houston to relay an update: If he beat Bernhard Langer the next morning, he might face Tiger Woods in the quarterfinals that afternoon.

“Oh, no,” his son told him. “You can’t beat Tiger Woods.”

Maggert, of course, upset the top-ranked Woods, 2 and 1, en route to golf’s biggest payday.

MEANWHILE, THE LOSER SAYS . . .

After picking up $500,000 for finishing second to Maggert, Andrew Magee said the player who beat him is solid in all areas except one: “If he putted like Brad Faxon, he’d probably win everything.”

Uh, maybe not. Faxon, the No. 1 putter on tour in 1996, has slipped to No. 29 and has finished in the top 25 only once this year.

TOUGH TICKET

They might have had trouble giving away tickets for Sunday’s match-play final at La Costa, but scalpers were already out in force and working Monday’s American Express clinic featuring Woods.

SPEAKING OF TIGER

When Woods returns to action at the Bay Hill Invitational in two weeks, it could be without caddie Mike “Fluff” Cowan.

Woods’ caddie in two of his last three tournaments has been boyhood friend Bryon Bell, sparking speculation that Woods is about to dump Cowan, who has served him well since he left Peter Jacobsen for Woods in 1996.

Woods has denied that a split is imminent, saying he only wanted to help Bell pay for medical school, but those close to the young golfer say there is a problem with Cowan.

“Is there friction? Yes,” Butch Harmon, Woods’ coach, said this week at the Doral-Ryder Open in Miami. “They have some issues to work out. But it’s nothing more than what goes on with players and caddies all the time.”

ARNIE IN RETREAT

He’s nearing 70 and his game has headed south, so he’s thinking of giving up the game.

Sound like your neighbor?

No, it’s Arnold Palmer, who is planning to cut back his Senior PGA Tour tournament schedule.

“[This] could be it probably for a long time,” Palmer said last week during the Ace Group Classic at Naples, Fla., where he tied for 64th at seven over par. “If my golf game continues to be as poor as it is, I won’t play at all.”

Palmer, who will be 70 in September, said his decision has nothing to do with his health.

It’s his game that’s ailing.

“My iron play is atrocious,” he said, “and it has not been good for a long time.”

BIRDIES, BOGEYS, PARS

The fifth Crayola LPGA junior golf clinic will be held March 23 at Mission Hills Country Club driving range, as part of the Nabisco Dinah Shore. Details: (760) 324-4546.

A celebrity tournament will be played March 13 at the Inn at Silver Lakes at Helendale. The event benefits an international cultural exchange program that sends local high school students to Australia and New Zealand. Details: (760) 632-7770.

Planning ahead: The match-play championship comes back to La Costa next Feb. 23-27, moves to Victoria, Australia, in 2001 and returns to La Costa in 2002.

Staff writer Thomas Bonk contributed to this column.