by With a wave of moderate applause, Nelly Korda’s 2024 LPGA campaign officially ended Sunday with a bogey-free 66 and a tie for fifth at the CME Group Tour Championship.
It was a muted response to an otherwise seismic season, one that felt a lot like a seismograph for Korda.
There were seven victories, a player of the year awarda middle finger and nine points earned in the LPGA Hall of Fame.
It all started with a refusal from HOF during his second start, where she finished the eagle-birdie to literally put Lydia Ko’s professional immortality on ice and then beat Ko in the playoffs.
After seven weeks off due to the tour’s first stint through Asia, Korda returned and won four straight, making her fifth in a row overall, tying an LPGA record.
We must not forget the lack of commonalities during this historical period. She won from behind, from the lead, in various elements, on opposite coasts, in medal play, in match play and, finally, in a major (his first since 2021).
A week after the streak ended, she won again. In eight starts, she won six times and dominated the world no. More importantly, the bulk of the season remained: 4 major tournaments, the Olympics, the Solheim Cup and the $11 million WEC final.
Then came the par-3 12th hole at Lancaster Country Club.
Playing her third hole of the US Women’s Open, Korda hit three balls into the water, rolls a 10 and rolls 80 (Oddly enough, it was her second straight 80 at the USWO as she shot it in the final round at Pebble Beach in 23).
Korda missed the cut, then opened in 76 as she headed to a missed cut in her next start at the Meijer LPGA.
The ship seemed righted a week later at the KPMG Women’s PGA, where he posted a first-round 69, only to followed with an 81 – her highest score ever recorded as a professional.
Now she had a new streak: 3 consecutive missed cuts.
“With golf, it’s ups and downs,” she said at the Tour Championship. “It’s a roller coaster. You can never be comfortable.
There was no longer a weekend off after the Congress, but the series of confusing moments persisted.
Following a nondescript T-26 at the Amundi Evian, Korda arrived at the Paris Olympics to defend her gold medal from the Tokyo 2020 Games. A quadruple bogey in the second round left her scrambling to fight for a medal, which she did in the final round, only to be undone by a late triple bogey.
She then appeared at St. Andrews for the AIG Women’s Open, which she led for 36 holes before a 75-72 result, where she made a late double bogey in both rounds to tie for second.
Ko, in a full-circle moment, won both gold in Paris and the Women’s Open, the former representing a career medal sweep and securing her enshrinement in the LPGA Hall of Fame. His story was one of summer and continued into the fall when Korda skipped the tour’s second Asian swing – another seven-week layoff – partly due to an “injury minor on the neck.
And then she came back a few weeks ago in Naples, Florida, made five straight birdies and nine birdies in the final round and won The Annika.
“I said, like the beginning of the year, I just felt like it was pretty smooth. I would never say golf is easy, but I was just in a state of flow,” Korda told CME.
“Then, halfway through the year, it seemed like the hardest thing in the world, and overcoming that with my team, being able to lean on the people that mean the most to me, I think it’s was probably the most difficult and also the most rewarding.
Along the way, Korda became an aunt for the first time, attended the Met Galasuffered a dog bitehelped the United States win back the Solheim Cupdealt with migraines and posed for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 2025.
“Honestly, it’s been a crazy year,” she said. “I am grateful for all of this. I am grateful for the highs; grateful for the lows.
