HOUSTON – It took Karrie Webb only 16 attempts to win a major championship.
Sixteen is a small number in the grand scheme, though it didn’t feel like that to many at the time. Before Webb came charging from five back to win the 1999 du Maurier Classic, she faced a lot of questions about not winning a major.
She’d only been on tour for 3 ½ years, but she’d already won 15 LPGA titles and led the tour in scoring and in money. The du Maurier victory came in her 90th career start at age 24.
“It was probably the way it had to be done,” said Webb of her come-from-behind win, “because there was too much trying going on.”
Webb’s early career timeline is quite similar to that of current world No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul, the best player in the world without a major title. This week’s Chevron Championship is Thitikul's 91st official career start and her 28th major. (With five LPGA majors, there are more attempts for current players.)
Thitikul, 23, has won eight times in nearly 4 ½ seasons on tour, with two scoring titles and her first Rolex Player of the Year award last season.
She, too, has been peppered with questions about winning a major. This week she was asked how she tries to block out the noise.
“You know, you have it for every time I lost in a major for sure, thank you for reminding every week,” she said, laughing.
“Obviously I think it just another challenge of my career. I know what I have on like in my belt. Right now at this point of this age, I think I accomplish a lot, but obviously major is the one that I feel like first time always the hardest.”
“I couldn’t wait to get to Dinah Shore the next year because I knew I wasn’t going to have to answer those [questions] anymore,” she recalled.
Webb would go on to win the Dinah in 2000 (by 10 strokes!), along with her first U.S. Women’s Open title. In 2001, she became the youngest to win the career grand slam at age 26. From the time she won the du Maurier in 1999, Webb won a total of six majors in 13 starts. Her seventh and final major victory came in 2006, when she won what’s now the Chevron for a second time.
It’s important, Webb says, that Thitikul’s team helps her stay in the same frame of mind she has every other week, and not add too much extra emphasis on the majors.
Last year at the Amundi Evian Championship, where Thitikul lost to Grace Kim in a playoff, Webb notes that Thitikul did nothing wrong that day. Kim finished with a heroic eagle-birdie-eagle finish to beat her. It simply wasn’t meant to be that day for the Thai star, who is hardly alone in the waiting.
It took Lorena Ochoa, another LPGA Hall of Famer, 112 LPGA starts (24 majors) before she won her first, the Ricoh Women’s British Open at St. Andrews in her fifth season on the LPGA. Ochoa won her second major title in her very next attempt at the 2008 Kraft Nabisco.
Will this be the week that the questions end for Thitikul? Memorial Park, the Houston municipal that hosts the PGA Tour each spring, offers a new challenge.
Thitikul chose to skip last week’s JM Eagle LA Championship to work with her instructor, who flew in from Thailand to Texas. Her iron game felt off the past few events, and she wanted to drill down on it.
Perspective and patience are key, this week, said Webb, who’d won five LPGA events in that 1999 season before clinching the du Maurier.
“She’s going to win one,” said Webb, “and then once she does, they’ll just keep coming.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Chevron Championship: Jeeno Thitikul still aiming for first LPGA major