JUST 12 months ago the slightly built, and shy, Karrie Webb stood, arms aloft, on the 18th green at Woburn. She had just won, by the massive margin of six shots, the Weetabix Women's British Open, and within seconds of holing the winning, birdie putt, she was wet through, half-drowned in champagne sprayed over her by some fellow-Australian competitors.

It was a big start to something that was to become much bigger.

Webb, who had never won as a professional and was still only 20, took away £60,000 for that win, but, more importantly, gathered the confidence that has helped her to perhaps the most impressive start to a golfing career ever made, by man or woman.

Since that dramatic, drenching moment this world-wide Webb - she comes from Queensland, plays in America and Europe - has produced some simply astonishing results. Having got her US Tour card, about which more later, she finished second in her first event there. The `good-on yers' were still pouring in when she went and won her second event.

Nor was that all. In her next three tournaments she finished seventh, fourth and sixth and was the easy leader of the Money List.

No-one, except maybe Webb, expected such a situation to last. Rookie golfers are expected to behave themselves, to show respect to their more experienced colleagues; in short, in the in-phrase, to pay their dues. Webb treated that concept with traditional Australian contempt. She went out and also won the ninth event in which she played and since then she has had a sixth and two seconds.

In her season so far she has missed just one cut, and finished out of the top 20 only three times in 18 tournaments. She is still top of the US Money List with $643,591. Her principal rivals are the second-placed Laura Davies, who is $17,000 behind and the Swedes Annika Sorenstam and Liselotte Neumann, who are $103,000 and $114,000 behind respectively.

Webb has bought a house in Orlando, Florida, has divested herself of her caddie-boyfriend and has attracted contracts from Titleist, Izod clothing, Holden cars and the Oakley sunglasses.

It is a stunning change of lifestyles, and one which might never have happened. Towards the end of last year, although she had won the British Open, she ran into the intransigent authorities who run women's golf in America and was required to go through the two qualifying schools before getting her card. Three weeks before the final school, she fell down some stairs in London and broke her wrist. Fortunately it was a `green stick' fracture and after a two- week lay-off, she was able to start hitting balls again.

She was not sure, though, when she went to America, if the injury would withstand the intensive practice and the four most nerve-wracking rounds most golfers ever endure. She came second.

Now she is back to defend the title which started it all. She played the course yesterday and the memories, particularly of the back nine in the final round last year, flooded back.

Last year she played a shot through an infinitesimal space in the trees at the 16th, a shot Severiano Ballesteros might have spurned as being too dangerous. "I have to say," she smiled yesterday, "that it looked harder this year than 1 remembered it being." At the time it seemed a shot played with the full confidence of youth, but yesterday she said: "I had a six-shot lead and yet I was so nervous. Those nine holes were the longest nine of my life."

Twelve months on and an incredible string of accomplishments, it seems safe to say she will never he so nervous again.