New venue creates renewed interest in Women's Australian Open

BY Bruce Young | ALPG Tour | 2003 Women's Australian Open | Preview | 25 Feb 2003

In what appears to be a replay of last week’s ANZ Ladies Masters, the 2003 Women’s Australian Open gets under way at the Terrey Hills Golf Club in Sydney with Karrie Webb once again the hot favourite to take out the title. Webb is defending the title she won at Yarra Yarra last year in a playoff over Norway’s Suzann Pettersen.

Terrey Hills was opened in 1994 and was designed by Graham Marsh for a Japanese consortium. It staged its first event in 1995, the Canon Challenge and held that event for the next five years. The course lies thirty or so minutes to the north of Sydney and east of the area known as Terrey Hills or French’s Forest.

The course measures 5,820 metres (6,380 yards) and par 72. The key hole down the stretch will be the dangerous seventeenth, which demands an accurate tee shot, and then a second to a green guarded by water in the front right.

The field is essentially the same as the one that competed in the rain shortened ANZ Ladies Masters on the Gold Coast last week with Karrie Webb, Laura Davies, Laura Diaz, Rachel Teske, Lorena Ochoa, Beth Bauer and Kelly Robbins heading the field.

Terrey Hills is a strategic golf course and somewhat different to what the field faced last week at Royal Pines. Karrie Webb will no doubt be right in the thick of things again but she faces a very much in-form and confident Laura Davies.

Lorena Ochoa showed last week that the accolades she has attracted were accurate and Rachel Teske’s strong finish suggests that she won’t be far away at the finish either.

As was the case at the Ladies Masters, it is a high quality field and one that will provide plenty of interest as Webb looks to kick start her 2003 year.

The event is worth $A500,000; rather disappointing in comparison to what has been mustered at Royal Pines in recent years but now that the event has been taken “on the road” after many years at Yarra Yarra, it is hoped that it can generate the interest that will allow it to grow, and in turn, attract more sponsorship.