All of the speak can be about Nelly Korda’s seven (and counting) wins in 2024 — and that’s for good cause. However what occurred between them will in the end form her continued cost into the LPGA historical past books.
Korda received her fifteenth LPGA Tour occasion this weekend at The Annika, including a seventh victory to her adorned 2024 event resume. Lately topped the Rolex Participant of the 12 months, Korda emerged on prime of the leaderboard for the primary time since Might. She grabbed the win with a lingering neck damage that took her out of the LPGA’s fall Asia swing. Earlier than teeing it up at Pelican Golf Membership exterior of Tampa, Fla., Korda hadn’t performed competitively since late September.
But she nonetheless pulled out the victory, firing 5 consecutive birdies on the again 9 Sunday, beating world No. 11 Charley Hull, Weiwei Zhang and Jin Hee Im by three photographs. Enjoying near her hometown of Bradenton, Korda was greeted by her brother, tennis skilled Sebastian Korda, who drove an hour and 40 minutes to catch her profitable putt.
Korda is the primary American since Beth Daniel in 1990 to win seven LPGA Tour titles in a single calendar yr and the primary participant since Yani Tseng in 2011. She has an opportunity at an eighth title and an enormous payday this week: The CME Group Tour Championship, the LPGA’s season-ending occasion, kicks off this week in Naples. Korda’s sport suits the Black Course at Tiburon Golf Membership excellently: In seven appearances on the event, Korda has three top-five finishes, and she or he’s solely completed exterior of the highest 10 as soon as. The winner will take residence a file $4 million.
The floodgates first opened in January in an analogous setting: Korda edged previous Lydia Ko in a playoff to win the LPGA Drive On Championship in Bradenton. A two-month event hiatus later and Korda was again on the course, dominating once more. From March 21 to April 21, Korda performed 4 occasions and received all of them: the Seri Pak Championship, the Ford Championship, the T-Cellular Match Play and her second main victory, The Chevron Championship. Her streak ended with Rose Zhang’s return to the winner’s circle on the Founders Cup, however Korda got here storming again only one week later, profitable at Liberty Nationwide. She knocked off six wins in seven begins.
The highlights that made @NellyKorda a 15x LPGA Tour Winner 🏆
She completed at -14 😮💨
WATCH ⬇️ https://t.co/mf7RVkHOV7
— LPGA (@LPGA) November 18, 2024
Missed cuts aren’t something to panic about in skilled golf — unhealthy weeks occur even for the most effective. However Korda’s lack of ability to make the weekend for 3 consecutive occasions after her beautiful win streak, together with on the U.S. Girls’s Open and the KPMG Girls’s PGA, sounded alarm bells. Korda shot 80 at Lancaster — with a ten on one gap — and 81 after a gap spherical 69 at Sahalee. On the season’s ultimate main, the Girls’s Open, Korda let a two-major season slip away with a late-round implosion on the Previous Course. “Pay attention, it’s golf,” she mentioned at St. Andrews. “I’m going to mess up, and sadly I tousled over the weekend twice in two penalizing methods coming down the stretch.”
Wanting on the numbers alone, it’s laborious to fathom that in a historic season, such a proficient participant might start to assume the game they’re unquestionably dominating feels unimaginable. However apparently, that’s precisely what Korda skilled.
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On the Wednesday earlier than The Annika, the 25-year-old informed the LPGA’s official podcast that she sunk to fairly a big low this summer time, throughout which her sport began to spiral. Korda was enjoying scared — any aggressive golfer’s worst nightmare, typically the supply of compounding errors — and didn’t look or really feel like herself.
“I bought right into a funk in the course of the season the place I used to be enjoying rather well, and I don’t need to take it with no consideration but it surely was simply clicking, proper? I used to be simply flowing with it. After which in the course of the season it felt like the toughest factor on this planet, all of the criticism that you just hear however you don’t need to have a look at. It’s powerful to cope with,” Korda informed podcast co-hosts Emma Talley and Hope Barnett.
“It made me afraid to make errors, however to the purpose the place … I began making extra errors as a result of I used to be so afraid of it. I simply needed to inform myself, I’m a human being, I’m going to have good days and I’m going to have actually unhealthy days, and it doesn’t outline me. I can’t be afraid of constructing these errors as a result of it’s simply going to eat me alive.”
Nelly Korda has received thrice at The Pelican’s LPGA occasion. (Cliff Hawkins / Getty Pictures)
In Might, instantly after that unimaginable six-win stretch, it could be unfathomable to assume Korda would craft a quasi-comeback arc throughout her 2024 season. But, in a approach, that’s what she did. After a machine-like opening to the yr, Korda confronted on-course demons and bodily limitations. She withdrew from an occasion over the summer time after struggling a canine chunk and handled migraines and her eventual neck damage into the autumn. However she pulled herself out of that rut.
“I really feel like I’ve lived 9 lives since January,” the world No. 1 mentioned. “This yr has been loopy. It’s been superb, but it surely’s additionally examined me a lot. I’ve gone by among the lowest lows to the best of highs.”
It says so much that Korda shared these particulars about her midseason struggles earlier than coming again and profitable once more at The Annika. The valleys in Korda’s whirlwind of a season appear to have been extra personally impactful than her peaks. She didn’t want this seventh win to return to that conclusion.
“I noticed what actually issues really in life, you realize, by the powerful occasions,” Korda mentioned after her victory. “I might say you’re probably not grateful for them. You’re like, why me? Why is that this occurring to me? Right here we go once more. However you need to be pleased about these occasions as a result of they do aid you develop.”
(High photograph: Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Pictures)
