We make frightening demands of our golfers. When someone wins a major title, we want to know when he or she is going to win another. And when 25-year-old Nelly Korda won the LPGA’s Ford Championship at Seville Golf and Country Club in Gilbert, Arizona, on March 31, her third victory in as many starts, the golfing fraternity wasted no time in speculating whether she could make it four in a row. On Sunday, she did just that, with a convincing win over Leona Maguire in the final of the T-Mobile Match Play. And now it's all about whether she can advance to the five in a row it would take to share a record held jointly by Nancy Lopez and Annika Sörenstam.
Never before can a pre-Masters week have been so heavily punctuated by goings-on not just in women’s golf but in women’s sport at large. Twenty-four hours after Korda had signed off from her run of four consecutive events, Caitlin Clark was starring for the Iowa Hawkeyes, who had the better of Louisiana State in the Elite Eight of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. With viewership averaging 12.3 million, theirs was one of the most-watched games in U.S. sport other than NFL football.
At last year’s Masters, millions watched the conclusion of Jon Rahm’s victory and, as applied then, Laura Davies will be among the commentators at Sky Sports doing their bit to keep viewing figures on the up this week. Should the conversation turn to Korda’s standing in the game, this winner of four major championships is perfectly placed to comment on whether Korda is blessed with the same magic as Lopez or Sörenstam. She has, after all, played in the fields with each of them at some point.
“Nelly,” she began in a conversation with GGP, “is no different from Nancy and Annika in having an uncanny ability to go on autopilot when the pressure mounts. Instead of feeling nervous, she’s not worrying about what everyone else is doing. Like the others, she’s thinking, ‘What do I need to do to win?’”
“Nelly’s strongest golfing suit is her ability to reduce par-5s to par-4s. All the par-5s are par-4s for her.”
Laura Davies
Davies mentioned that she herself had experienced “snatches of playing on autopilot,” only in her case nerves would come into the equation when she started to concentrate on turning two titles into three.
Looking at the trio as golfers, Davies says that Sörenstam was out on her own in being able to cope on any course. “She didn’t have to like where she was playing; she just got on with things wherever she was. Her distance-control was ridiculous and, for what it’s worth, I’ve always thought that she was a bit like Scottie Scheffler in her consistency with the irons. Rather than having to putt from the front of the green or the back, she would consistently leave herself with a putt that was pin high.”
Moving on to Lopez, Davies was as admiring as the next person about the happy manner in which she went about her business. “Golf-wise,” she said, “Nancy had no weaknesses. She became a bit of a streaky putter but, in her rookie season, which was when she won her five-in-a-row and nine titles in all, she was anything but.”
Davies remembers the conversation she had with Korda’s older sister, Jessica, shortly before she turned professional in 2010 as a 17-year-old. The two were chatting about the up-and-coming players of the moment when it hit the elder Korda that they had forgotten someone. “You should see my sister,” she advised her companion.
When the time came, Davies was every bit as taken aback as Jessica Korda had thought she might be.
Of course, Davies knows enough not to expect miracles from the younger Korda, even if she already has 12 LPGA titles, including one major, the 2021 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, under her belt. However, Davies doubts that any player could have more going for her than Korda has already.
“She had her problems last year [after undergoing surgery in 2022 to remove a blood clot in her left arm], but the Nelly we’ve seen this year is like the Nelly of ’21 when she won five times, if you include the Olympics.
“If Nancy didn’t have any weaknesses and Annika’s forte was her iron play,” Davies said, “Nelly’s strongest golfing suit is her ability to reduce par-5s to par-4s. All the par-5s are par-4s for her.” Which, of course, was how it used to be for Davies until the LPGA made the longer holes a bit shorter so that the average hitters could catch them in two.
Next to Nelly’s length, Davies picked out the advantage she has in coming from a family such as the Kordas, where everyone is brimful of talent and sporting know-how. Her father, Petr Korda, now 56, won the Australian Open (tennis) in 1998. Her mother, Regina Rajchrtová, also 56, twice reached the fourth round in the U.S. Open (tennis). Her brother, Sebastian, then 17 and now 23, won the Junior title at the Australian Open (tennis again) and plays golf to a 2-handicap.
For an example of the respect all the children have for their parents, Sebastian, when he won that title, conceded that he had been watching a YouTube video of his father winning the Australian Open for months on end.
“The support of a good and knowledgeable family is huge,” Davies said. “Nancy and Annika were lucky on that front, too, as was I, but there are plenty of pushy parents out there today who think they know all about what their offspring must do to win when they don’t begin to understand what's involved.
“A lot of them,” she concluded, “say all the wrong things.”
All of which made you think how the Kordas would have been saying all the right things as Nelly was concentrating on a fourth consecutive win at last week’s T-Mobile Match Play. And how, even it that wish hadn't been granted, they would have known exactly what to say again by way of keeping her spirits up.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Nelly Korda has an ability to shorten a golf course with her length that sets her apart.
Orlando Ramirez, Getty Images