Metaphorical pages tend to turn themselves.
The world looks one way until one day it looks different.
Palmer gives way to Nicklaus who gives way to Woods.
That’s where women’s professional golf finds itself these days, living in Nelly Korda’s world as she has restructured the game’s hierarchy, separating herself with a sustained stretch of brilliance that looks and feels less like a hot streak and more like a way of life.
Just because Korda’s U.S. Women’s Open blew up before lunchtime Thursday at Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Country Club when she made a septuple bogey-10 on her third hole, the par-3 12th hole, where the difficulty caused player traffic to back up like a clogged drain doesn’t diminish what she’s doing these days.
Golf has a way of getting in the way once in a while, even for the best players. In 2020, Tiger Woods made a 10 on the 12th hole at Augusta National.
“I’m human. I’m going to have bad days,” Korda said Thursday, the disappointment practically dripping off her.
It happens.
As a backdrop, Korda’s ascendance is happening as Lexi Thompson, who has spent most of her 29 years as a star, has decided it’s time to do something else, ending a full-time competitive career that may embody the fantastic and fickle nature of golf’s unsolvable puzzle.
Korda doesn’t have to be Caitlin Clark to drive women’s professional golf, but she has a rare opportunity to transcend the sport.
Thompson has an element of Michelle Wie West about her, a star whose celebrity may have been bigger than her achievements, though Thompson won 14 times worldwide, including 11 on the LPGA Tour, the biggest victory being the 2014 Kraft Nabisco Championship when she became the second-youngest major champion.
It’s staggering to think that Thompson played in her 18th U.S. Women’s Open last week. She started at age 12 and has been a part of the national championship every year since.
Now she’s stepping away, and if that’s what she wants, she’s earned it because it hasn’t been easy, which she alluded to during her retirement announcement.
This juxtaposition of two stars’ orbits comes at a time when women’s sports are surging. There have been waves in the past, and women’s golf has benefited through the years from what Nancy Lopez and Annika Sörenstam, in particular, have done.
The Caitlin Clark phenomenon had a transformative effect on women’s basketball, drawing fans and viewers not just out of curiosity but because she was changing the sport by how she played. Clark’s combination of charisma and boundary-bending talent has been magnetic.
She made her college games at Iowa appointment viewing and, while it’s too early to say for sure, she’s likely to lift the WNBA to a new level. Every sport needs someone like that, but not every sport has it.
Korda doesn’t have to be Caitlin Clark to drive women’s professional golf, but she has a rare opportunity to transcend the sport. She can be more than the best women’s golfer in the world. Her star turn at the Met Gala recently suggested Korda has entered a world that reaches beyond the golf course.
The Women’s Open aside, what Korda is doing this year is extraordinary. She tied the LPGA Tour record with five consecutive victories, joining Lopez and Sörenstam in that exclusive group, adding a second career major championship victory in the process.
“Caitlin was doing things nobody had ever done,” Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee said. “The chance to see something unprecedented is captivating, and it gets everybody to run out of the kitchen and sit down on the couch. There’s a sense you are watching history made. It’s tough to make history in golf. Going for her sixth straight [victory] was a chance to do something no one had done. That got everyone’s attention.”
Korda may not play to the crowd like Bryson DeChambeau does or have the magnetic energy that Rory McIlroy does, but she has the game. Each week when she plays, Korda tends to be the first name fans search out. Her struggles in the Women’s Open are, however, beginning to take on a life of their own.
Thompson has grown up with eyes on her, and the attention has not always helped her. Some players live in the spotlight as if it’s an overcoat around them, while others never find a comfortable spot there.
With her unique swing and her ponytail dancing behind her, Thompson has been one of the most accomplished players of her generation. She won an LPGA event at 16, was a major champion at 19 and played in a PGA Tour event last year, missing the cut by three strokes.
“Everybody out here has their own struggles. ... Just don't judge anybody because you don't know what they're going through and what they have going on in their mind and their heart and just be gentle with them.”
Lexi Thompson
Thompson knows the cruel side of golf, too. At the 2017 ANA Championship, she was penalized four strokes on Sunday for incorrectly replacing her ball on the green during the third round a day earlier, a ruling that understandably shook her and forced her into a playoff where she was beaten by So Yeon Ryu.
That same year, Thompson missed a 2-foot putt on the final green to lose the CME Group Tour Championship by one stroke. In 2021, Thompson led the U.S. Women’s Open by five strokes during the final round at San Francisco’s Olympic Club, only to shoot 41 on the closing nine to lose by one stroke.
In 2018, Thompson stepped away from professional golf for a time, explaining that she needed, in her words, to “recharge my mental batteries.”
It was a battle Thompson continued to fight and, against the somber backdrop of Grayson Murray’s suicide less than a week earlier, Thompson spoke again last week about the challenge she constantly fought as a professional golfer.
“Everybody out here has their own struggles. That's what I always say. Just don't judge anybody because you don't know what they're going through and what they have going on in their mind and their heart and just be gentle with them,” Thompson said.
Sharing that message can be an enduring part of Thompson’s legacy as she closes the book on her full-time playing career.
It’s time to turn the page and see where Nelly Korda’s story goes from here.
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Top: As Lexi Thompson (right) steps away, Nelly Korda is ready to step in.
Harry How, Getty Images