Nelly Korda has won 7 times on the LPGA Tour in 2024, but it wasn’t always easy
All the talk will be about Nelly Korda’s seven (and counting) wins in 2024 – and for good reason. But what happened between them will ultimately determine her continued contribution in the LPGA history books.
Korda won her 15th LPGA Tour event this weekend at The Annika, adding a seventh win to her decorated tournament resume of 2024. Korda was recently crowned Rolex Player of the Year and topped the leaderboard for the first time since May . She took the win with a lingering neck injury that took her out of the LPGA’s fall Asia swing. Before teeing up at Pelican Golf Club outside Tampa, Florida, Korda had not played competitively since late September.
Yet she still took victory by firing off five consecutive birdies on the back nine Sunday, beating world No. 11 Charley Hull, Weiwei Zhang and Jin Hee Im by three shots. Playing close to her hometown of Bradenton, Korda was greeted by her brother, tennis professional Sebastian Korda, who drove an hour and 40 minutes to catch her winning putt.
Korda is the first American since Beth Daniel in 1990 to win seven LPGA Tour titles in one calendar year and the first player since Yani Tseng in 2011. She has a shot at an eighth title and a big payday this week: the CME Group Tour Championship, the LPGA’s season-ending event, kicks off this week in Naples. Korda’s game is a great fit for Tiburon Golf Club’s Black Course: In seven appearances at the tournament, Korda has finished in the top five three times, and she has only finished outside the top 10 once. The winner will take home a record $4 million.
The floodgates first opened in January in a similar setting: Korda passed Lydia Ko in a playoff to win the LPGA Drive On Championship in Bradenton. A two-month tournament hiatus later, Korda was back on court and dominated again. From March 21 to April 21, Korda played four events and won them all: the Seri Pak Championship, the Ford Championship, the T-Mobile Match Play, and her second major win, The Chevron Championship. Her streak ended when Rose Zhang returned to the Founders Cup winners circle, but Korda stormed back just a week later to win at Liberty National. She scored six wins in seven starts.
The highlights that made it @NellyKorda a 15x LPGA Tour winner 🏆
She finished at -14 😮💨
— LPGA (@LPGA) November 18, 2024
Missed cuts are nothing to panic about in professional golf; bad weeks happen even to the best. But Korda’s inability to make it to the weekend for three straight events following her stunning win streak, including at the US Women’s Open and the KPMG Women’s PGA, raised alarm bells. Korda shot 80 on Lancaster – with a 10 on one hole – and 81 after an opening-round 69 on Sahalee. At the final major of the season, the Women’s Open, Korda let a season of two majors slip away with an implosion at the end of the round on the Old Course. “Listen, it’s golf,” she said at St. Andrews. “I’m going to mess up, and unfortunately this weekend I made two mistakes in two punishing ways.”
Just looking at the numbers, it’s hard to imagine how such a talented player could come to think during a historic season that the sport he undoubtedly dominates seems impossible. But apparently that’s exactly what Korda experienced.
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The 25-year-old said for De Annika on Wednesday the official podcast of the LPGA that she sank to quite a low point this summer, with her playing spiraling. Korda played scared – every competitive golfer’s worst nightmare, often the source of compound errors – and didn’t look or feel like himself.
“I got into trouble in the middle of the season and played really well, and I don’t want to take it for granted, but we just clicked, right? I just flowed with it. And then, in the middle of the season, it felt like the hardest thing in the world, all the criticism you hear but you don’t want to look at. It’s hard to deal with,” Korda told podcast co-hosts Emma Talley and Hope Barnett.
“It made me afraid of making mistakes, but to the point where… I started making more mistakes because I was so afraid of them. I had to tell myself, I’m human, I’m going to have good days and I’m going to have really bad days, and that doesn’t define me. I can’t be afraid of making these mistakes because it will just eat me alive.”
Nelly Korda has won three times at The Pelican’s LPGA event. (Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
In May, immediately following that incredible six-win stretch, it would be unfathomable to think Korda would make a quasi-comeback arc during her 2024 season. Yet in a sense that is what she did. After a machine-like opening to the year, Korda faced demons and physical limitations on course. She withdrew from an event this summer after suffering a dog bite and suffered migraines and her eventual neck injury in the fall. But she pulled herself out of that rut.
“I feel like I’ve lived nine lives since January,” said the world number 1. “This year has been crazy. It was great, but it also really tested me. I have been through some of the lowest lows, to the highest highs.”
It says a lot that Korda shared those details about her midseason struggles before coming back and winning again on The Annika. The valleys in Korda’s whirlwind of a season seem to have had a more personal impact than her peaks. She didn’t need this seventh win to come to that conclusion.
“I realized what really matters in life, you know, during the hard times,” Korda said after her victory. “I’d say you’re not really grateful for them. You’re like, why me? Why is this happening to me? Here we go again. But you have to be grateful for those moments because they help you grow.”
(Top photo: Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images)
