Nelly Korda confirms herself as the queen of women's golf. The American, number 1 in the world, dominated "The Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican" in Florida and scored her 15th career victory on the LPGA Tour, the seventh of 2024. Since 1970, among Americans, only Kathy Whitworth (1973), Nancy Lopez (1978, 1979) and Beth Daniel (1990) had managed to win seven or more tournaments in a single season before.
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Nelly Korda, results
And more generally, it was since 2011 (Yami Tseng) that a proette had managed a similar feat. Unstoppable, the 26-year-old from Bradenton triumphed in Belleair with a score of 266 (-14), three shots ahead of Chinese Weiwei Zhang, South Korean Jin Hee Im and English Charley Hull, all 2nd with 269 (-11). As if that weren't enough, Korda distinguished herself as the first player since Jin Young Ko (who won the Founders Cup in 2019, 2021 and 2023) to win three times in an event that she also won in 2021 and 2022. In addition, thanks to yet another gem, she established herself as the 28th American to have won at least 15 events on the LPGA Tour. Furthermore, the exploit earned her $487,500 (against a total prize pool of $3,250,000) and allowed her season earnings to reach $4,164,430, breaking the wall of $13,000,000 earned in her career.
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Born in Bradenton, a city in Manatee County, she is the daughter of Czech tennis players Petr Korda and Regina Rajchrtov, and the sister of Jessica, also a golfer,[2] and Sebastian, a professional tennis player.
She turned professional in 2016 with the participation of the Symetra Tour, where she obtained her first victory on the occasion of the Sioux Falls GreatLIFE Challenge with rounds of 68-67-69-66 that earned her the success against the Thai Meechai. She opened 2021 by winning the Gainbridge LPGA in Orlando, on the green of the Lake Nona Golf & Country Club (par 72), with a total of 272 (-16) strokes, thanks to which she overcame the competition of the second-placed Thompson and Ko (275, -13), and the South Korean and world no. 1 Ko (277, -11).
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The following June she won her first major,with the success at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship, thanks to which she leapt to the top of the world rankings- the first American to top the ranking since Lewis in 2014 - and broke a long domination of South Korean golfers. Thanks to the position attributed to her by the Rolex World Women's Golf Ranking, she obtained qualification for the individual tournament of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games:[9] she was among the four representatives of the United States in Japan together with the various Thompsons, Kangs and her older sister Jessica.
On August 7, she became Olympic champion on the course of the Kasumigaseki Country Club in Kawagoe, closing the test with 267 strokes, 17 under par. In second place after the first round with 67 strokes, -4 on par, she took the lead in the second round closed in 62 strokes and in the last two rounds she managed the advantage finishing both with 69 strokes, resisting the comeback of the home player Inami and the New Zealander Ko, who finished the test with 268 strokes.
