ESPN.com - Golf Online - Webb takes major step during opening round

Associated Press
Thursday, March 23

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. -- Karrie Webb expects to have some bad days on the golf course. The rest of the LPGA Tour hasn't seen too much of that.


	Dottie Pepper had three birdies over her final four holes to get within one shot.

Webb had five birdies en route to a 5-under 67 and a one-shot lead over defending champion Dottie Pepper in Thursday's opening round of the Nabisco Championship, the LPGA's first major of the year.

"I'm in some sort of zone," said Webb, who has three LPGA victories and another non-tour win this season. "I have a lot of belief in my game right now. It was just good to see some good iron shots and some putts go in."

Webb's bid to become the first golfer in 22 years to win four consecutive LPGA tournaments ended with a second-place finish last week at Phoenix.

"I don't expect to play well all the time," she said. "I know there's going to be bad days and I just have to try and make them as good as possible."

Seeing Webb's name atop the leaderboard might intimidate some players, but Pepper takes it as a good sign.

"As long as you see a good number up there, you know the golf course can give something up," she said. "Certainly it helps not to dig yourself a hole, but she's human, too, and she's not finished tournaments so strongly and other people have."

Pepper did just that Thursday. She birdied three of the final four holes for a 68 and was one of four players within three shots of Webb. She shot a tournament-record 19-under 269 to win by six strokes last year.

"I finished my round like you're supposed to finish a round," she said. "I hung in there and I was very patient with myself all day. That's what it takes to play well on this golf course under these conditions."

Rachel Hetherington, a two-time winner last year, was third with a 69. She and Webb were frequent competitors as juniors in their native Queensland, Australia.

"I've known her for so long that I don't feel intimidated by her game or the way she plays," Hetherington said. "If anything, it helps you because you've got to improve your game and raise it to another level to be competitive out here."

That's a feeling Beth Daniel doesn't have much anymore.

Daniel, who will be inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame this year, and Barb Whitehead, whose only tour victory was five years ago, each shot 70.

"I don't feel like I have to really prove anything out there anymore. I'm certainly not as intense as I once was," Daniel said. "I still want to play golf and I still feel like I'm capable of winning, but I'm really, really having a hard time drawing up that fire at times."

Daniel missed seven greens, so she spent much of her round getting up and down in only her second tournament since taking a month off.

Laura Davies led a group of five players at 71. Amateur Beth Bauer, a sophomore at Duke, was one of five players at even-par 72.

Annika Sorenstam stumbled to a 4-over 76 that included a double-bogey on the par-3, 164-yard fifth, where she hit her tee shot into the water. She played the front nine 4-over, but came back at even-par.

Aree and Naree Song Wongluekiet, the 13-year-old twin sisters from Thailand who are the second-youngest ever to play in an LPGA tournament, shot better than Juli Inkster and Nancy Lopez. Naree had a 74 and Aree shot 75. Each sister played the back nine in even par.

Naree said the conditions were more difficult than in junior tournaments.

"There's no rough in junior golf and the putting surface is very fast," she said. "I started off very poorly. I couldn't keep it in the fairway. In the middle of the round, I started playing decent and my putting was quite good."

Webb hit 16 greens on the 6,520-yard, par-72 Dinah Shore course at Mission Hills Country Club under sunny, warm and relatively calm conditions.

She went home Wednesday unhappy with the way she played in the two-day pro-am, and showed up early Thursday to practice.

"The confidence is a big thing for me right now. On the first tee, everything that happened the past two days pretty much vanished," she said. "I hit a good swing on my first drive, hit the middle of the fairway and never looked back from there."

Webb's trickiest moment came on the par-4, 385-yard 12th.

Her second shot hit a tree branch on the left side of the fairway, then bounced across and hit the base of a tree before coming to rest back in the fairway. Unruffled, she landed her third shot 12 feet from the pin and salvaged a par.

"Someone who's not working with a lot of confidence might not get it up and down there," she said. "I didn't put myself into danger of making too many mistakes."

Despite the favorable conditions, several big names couldn't make a run at Webb.

Se Ri Pak, playing with Sorenstam, had a 1-over 73. Meg Mallon, playing with Webb, finished with a 75. Inkster, a two-time Nabisco winner, had a 76, and Lopez, who won in 1981 before the tournament became a major, struggled to a 78.

Divots

If Sorenstam seems to be smiling more, it's because she finally got her braces off. "Now I can eat whatever I want," she said. The braces distracted her during photo shoots and commercials. "I wanted to keep my lips together. It might have looked like I was bored, but I just didn't want to show my metal."

The tournament has dropped Dinah Shore's name from its title six years after the singer's death. It's the first time her name isn't on the event since Colgate began the Dinah Shore Winner's Circle tournament in 1972. Pepper agreed with the change. "You're getting into a situation where someone's going to win this tournament and say, 'Who's Dinah Shore?' " she said. "That's really sad, but at the same time you have to move forward and recognize what she did for women's golf."

There were prominent reminders of Shore. A bronze statue of her waving and carrying a golf club, sculpted by her first husband, George Montgomery, stands at the 18th green. A wall of champions borders the lake at the hole, listing past winners and their totals, and Shore's name is on a merchandise tent near the clubhouse.