Modern day greats renew rivalry at US Senior Women’s Open
Karrie Webb – during practice at Barton Hills this week – image USGA
The US Senior Women’s Open sees many of the modern greats of the women’s game competing for the most prestigious title in the seniors’ game when the event gets underway at the Barton Hills Country Club in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Thursday.
The course, around 70 kilometres west of Detroit, is yet another of the great traditional layouts designed by Donald Ross and was opened in 1922.
This week’s field of 120 includes four Australians, Karrie Webb, Rachel Hetherington, Nadene Gole and Sue Wooster.
Webb is, of course, one of Australia’s greatest players; in fact, her record of 7 major titles, five of those different championships, gives her a genuine reason to be considered Australia’s greatest alongside Peter Thomson and Greg Norman, the actual order of greatness up for debate.
Queensland’s Webb won an incredible 41 LPGA Tour titles, and although she has played very seldom, competitively, in recent years she retains one of the finest swings in the female game.
“I just love Barton Hills,” said Webb. “I asked a ton of people over the last 12 months if they’d heard of Barton Hills or played it, and I didn’t get any feedback about it, apart from what I could find online and a few photos. It’s a great golf course.
“I’m a big fan of Donald Ross golf courses. The course is in amazing shape. It’s going to be a tough test. It’s definitely a U.S. Open feel to it this week. We’re going to have to play well to shoot some good scores around here.
“I think obviously there’s probably not the intensity of what a U.S. Open felt like when I was playing, the U.S. Women’s Open. But coming to a venue like this and the USGA does it right, it does have a U.S. Open feel to it.”
NSW’s Hetherington (formerly known as Teske) won eight LPGA Tour titles in her impressive career and was twice runner-up at the major level. Like Webb, she has been out of competitive golf for many years, her last LPGA Tour start in 2016 and her last full season in 2009.
Victorian Nadene Gole is a winner of both the 2024 British and 2024 US Senior Amateur titles and reached the world number one standing in Senior Women’s Amateur golf during that period.
Wooster has been a four-time runner-up in the US Senior Women’s Amateur Championship.
The field also includes two of Webb’s great rivals during their regular tour careers, Annika Sorenstam and Julie Inkster, who won 10 and 7 major championships during their respective time on the LPGA Tour. Sorenstam won this title in 2021, and Inkster was twice runner-up in the first two years of the event
