Karrie On Winning

A winning Webb birdie would have left people making little more than a passing reference to the mishaps that had gone before.

As it was, the portents were not good even before she launched into her tee-shot. She had had a warning for slow play at the 17th along with a difference of opinion with her caddie as to whether she should go with her driver at the 18th or play safe with a 5-wood.

She went against her better judgement in listening to her caddie and, to his horror even more obviously than hers, she landed in the fairway bunker.

People wondered at her choice of club for the recovery and they were right to. Instead of soaring down the fairway, her ball cannoned into the lip on the bunker’s left-hand flank and stayed put in the sand.

It led to a disaster of a six which would have been all the harder to bear in that the colourful duo of Creamer and Munoz were busy preparing for a return to the 18th tee for what was now a two-way play-off.

Things would get worse for the stricken Webb.

There was nowhere in the whole of Singapore where she could have escaped the razzmatazz of Creamer’s winning 75-footer at the second extra hole. The putt in question was a final thrust which, rather like the cartwheel the player turned over the legendary Swilcan Bridge at St Andrews in 2007, went viral.

Sandwiched between Webb’s finish and Creamer’s, there had been an interview with the local media which could not have gone worse. Webb had been in no mood to smile sweetly as one member of the Fourth Estate wanted to know if the passage of time had made it more difficult to handle such high pressure situations.

It was a bold question and the other writers were open-mouthed as they watched the impact it would have on its still-shaken recipient.

To no one’s great surprise, Webb was in no mood to call on a string of old clichés about things not having gone her way. Instead, she let rip with a terse, "If you’re insinuating that this has anything to do with my age you can ... "

It was hardly what anyone expected of this revered Hall of Famer but it was a moment which told more about Webb than anything that had gone before. You knew at once that this was not going to be the day when she would say, “That’s it, I’ve had enough!” and mean it.

In what is nowadays an LPGA season of five majors, she was already steeling herself for the mother and father of replies.