Karrie Webb

Throughout much of her early career, Webb was reticent to speak openly to reporters or to create much of a public personality at all, particularly after the press wrote some speculative articles about her personal life after her breakup with Todd Haller. She is notorious for rarely removing her sunglasses, for example. Yet Webb and her friends have always insisted that she is a warm person in private, that she is simply shy. Indeed, after her first few seasons she did become more open and humorous on and off the course. Her masterful remarks at the gala party that the LPGA held at the beginning of the 2000 season to mark the association's fiftieth anniversary, for example, did a great deal to erase her former reputation for shyness. They also did much to endear her to the powers that be in the LPGA, which is searching for a charismatic and successful player to sell professional women's golf to potential fans.

Between Webb and Sorenstam, fans of women's professional golf have been enjoying an unusual treat: A record-breaking level of golf excellence and a degree of competition that has been absent from the Tiger Woods-dominated men's scene. As Webb entered her eighth full year of touring with the LPGA in 2003 at a still-young 28, her fans would have many more years of phenomenal golf to look forward to.