Australia's Karrie Webb is the most successful golfer currently active on the LPGA Tour and is widely acknowledged to be an Australian golfing and sporting legend.
Webb won her first professional title in 1995 at the Women's British Open, which also kicked off her incredible rivalry with Annika Sorenstam, who was runner-up. Her win at the championship came six years before it was elevated to Major status.
The Ladies European Tour awarded Webb the Rookie of the Year title in 1995. Webb was then named Rookie of the Year again the following year, this time on the LPGA Tour.
She claimed her first Major Championship in 1999 at the du Maurier Classic and went on to win six more.
Webb has been the LPGA's leading money winner three times and won the Player of the Year award in 1999 and 2000.
She was the youngest living person ever to enter into the Golf Hall of Fame after she was inducted in 2005 at the age of 30.
#ThrowbackThursday to Palm Beach, Fla., in 2005, and the LPGA's celebration honoring Karrie Webb for her induction into the Hall of Fame. So, this is what a group photo of a combined 25 Major Championships and 177 wins on the @LPGA looks like: ah-mah-zing! #MemberOfTheMonth pic.twitter.com/xN7elKyPre
— Golf Hall of Fame (@GolfHallofFame) December 17, 2020
Four Major wins in two seasons in 2000 and 2001 ensured that Webb was the youngest woman in history to complete an LPGA career Grand Slam and she would later become the first to achieve the so-called Super Slam.
Webb has been a staunch campaigner for equal pay for women in sport and a respected mentor to young Australian golfers, notably Hannah Green, winner of the 2019 Women's PGA Championship.
She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her services to golf and to the community in 2010. In 2018, Webb was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) as she continued her outstanding golf career and supported numerous causes.
Amateur career
Webb started playing golf at the age of eight and by the time she was 18, she had made her first appearances for the Australian amateur team.
She competed in the Espirito Santo Trophy World Amateur Golf Team Championships with Australia before going on to be crowned Australian Strokeplay Champion.
Webb's amateur career was a short but successful one and ended when she turned professional as a teenager in October 1994.
Turning professional
Webb was named European Rookie of the Year in her first full season in 1995. She made her Tour debut in the Women's Australian Open in 1994, finishing second.
Karrie Webb is an Australian golfing and sporting legend whose current haul of 41 LPGA career wins betters all currently active players.
Karrie Webb is not only a standout performer in the women's game - her tally of seven Major titles also makes her Australia's most decorated winner of golf's most important championships.
She showed terrific grit and resilience to qualify for the LPGA Tour despite playing the qualifying tournament with a broken bone in her wrist.
In her rookie campaign on the LPGA Tour, Webb won four tournaments and became the first LPGA player to break the $1million mark in prize money for a single season.
In 1999, Webb shot an 11-under 277 at the Priddis Greens Golf & Country Club in Alberta to win her first Major with a two stroke victory over Laura Davies in the du Maurier Classic.
She would win seven tournaments in 2000 including a further two Majors and in 2001 she completed her career Grand Slam as she defended her US Open title and won the LPGA Championship for the first time.
Karrie Webb's Super Slam
By the end of 2001 Webb had completed victory in all four LPGA Majors, but at the end of that season there was a change made to them, with the Women's British Open replacing the du Maurier Classic in holding elevated status.
Webb's victory in that championship had come six years earlier and didn't count, but she wasted little time correcting the situation.
She entered the final round of the 2002 Women's British Open at Turnberry in a tie for fourth, three shots off joint leaders Jennifer Rosales and Carin Koch.
She joined a share of the lead midway through the front nine and birdies on the back nine ensured she kept compatriot Michelle Ellis at bay and completed her Super Slam.
She won the last of her seven Majors in 2006, enjoying something of a comeback that season after a disappointing 2005.
She claimed her second Nabisco Championship, later renamed the ANA Inspiration, in a sudden-death playoff against fellow legend Lorena Ochoa at Mission Hills Country Club, California.
Going part-time
The tournament wins started to thin out towards the end of the 2000s and Webb last won on the LPGA Tour in 2014.
She was controversially disqualified from the Australian Ladies Masters in 2014 for signing an incorrect scorecard.
In 2018, Webb, then 43-years-old, said she would be scaling back her participation on the LPGA Tour.
Webb's 41 LPGA Tour victories make her the most decorated player currently active on the Tour, even if she has drastically cut back her number of appearances.
She is tied for 10th on the LPGA's all-time tournament winners' list alongside women's golf trailblazer Babe Zaharias.
Karrie Webb's personal life
Webb grew up with the ambition of being a professional golfer, but has admitted that if she were 11-years-old again she would probably have gravitated towards cricket.
She was born and raised in the Queensland town of Ayr and credits her parents for getting her into golf.
Karrie Webb is a fine links golfer.
Her private life is a closely-guarded secret, but she let the walls down a little when she published a biography in 2002 with the help of Australian golf journalist Charles Happell. In it, she detailed how her engagement to former caddie Todd Haller was broken off and how her relationship with fellow LPGA professional Kelly Robbins began.
In more recent times Webb has returned to being guarded about her private life.
She has supported the Miami Dolphins for over 20 years and also follows Australian women's cricket closely. She carried the Olympic torch ahead of the 2000 Games in Sydney.
Karrie Webb's net worth
Only Annika Sorenstam has won more money on the LPGA Tour than Webb, who was the second woman to break the $20million mark in earnings.
Webb's net worth is estimated to be in the region of $15million.
She is a long-time supporter of The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. Webb also actively supports Spinal Cure Australia (SCA), another non-profit organization dedicated to the research and treatment of spinal injuries.
Webb is a Drummond Golf touring professional and she has had associations with Ping and TaylorMade in the past.