Four months ago, Nelly Korda stood in front of the assembled media in Naples, Fla., and tried to reflect on a frustrating season. A year after winning seven times, including a major, the LPGA’s biggest star didn’t lift a trophy.
On paper, things were similar. Korda finished the 2025 season with a better scoring average, better Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, better birdie or better percentage and better bogey avoidance numbers than in 2024. Her Strokes Gained: Approach numbers were almost even, and her putting ticked up. A few things were slightly down, but, for the most part, Nelly Korda looked like Nelly Korda.
“It’s honestly a fine line,” Korda said back in November at the CME Group Tour Championship. “It comes down to sometimes one shot. It’s like one putt lips out and you don’t get your momentum. It’s just such a fine line when it comes to golf.
“I don’t necessarily think that I’m a worse golfer or a better golfer. I would say that maybe last year few more things were going my way. That’s just kind of how golf is. I’ve never going to have a pity party and never going to be like, oh, why is it in this divot or why did I get that bad bounce. It’s just sports. That’s just how they are. Sometimes you get a wave of good bounces and good breaks and sometimes you don’t.”
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Golf is a fickle sport. A bad bounce there, a burned edge here or a poor strike there, and a winning moment can easily melt into a missed opportunity. Korda said the 2025 season was instructive, albeit disappointing. She leaned on her team and used it as a reminder that sometimes those around you have a better perspective on what’s going on than you do when you’re staring at something right in front of your face. In the sometimes isolating world of pro golf, having that support system can buoy you when the inevitable dips arrive.
Nelly Korda had few chances to win in 2025. Her late run at the Tournament of Champions came up short, and a regrettable swing ended her run at the U.S. Women’s Open. But, apart from those two instances, Nelly Korda’s exacting, overpowering style of golf that won her seven titles in 2024, made only short cameos in 2025. There would be a flash, but it rarely stayed for long at one time.
Things are different so far in 2026.
Korda opened the season with a win at the weather-shortened Tournament of Champions. As noteworthy as it should have been, it was hard to judge that 54-hole victory. Korda played outstanding golf in worsening conditions in the third round, but finished before the worst of the weather arrived and won the title on the driving range on Sunday. Then, she took six weeks off as the LPGA went on its Asia Swing.
But she returned two weeks ago at the Founders Cup and finished runner-up, with a three-putt bogey on Sunday costing her a chance to run down Hyo Joo Kim. Korda didn’t despair. She teed it up again this past week at the Ford Championship and held the 36-hole lead before Kim blazed past her on Saturday and coasted to a second straight win. A win and two runner-up finishes for Korda has the World No. 2 looking and sounding different than she did a few months ago.
“I’m just very grateful. If you’d have told me this time last year the finishes that I would have right now, I would be super happy with the game that is trending,” Korda said on Sunday after her second-place finish. “Last year, I just felt so weird with my game. Nothing was kind of going my way.”
It’s a minuscule sample size, but through 11 competitive rounds in 2026, Korda ranks first in total Strokes Gained: Total (4.00), first in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green (5.55), third in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee (2.10) and third in Strokes Gained: Approach (2.66). She also ranks first in scoring average, just slightly ahead of Kim, although Kim has played five more rounds so far in the early going.
Those numbers will obviously dip as more golf is played. But the more important point is that, after a year of being on the wrong side of golf’s fine line, Nelly Korda appears to be on the cusp of returning to her world-beating ways. That’s welcome news for a tour that has made broadcast improvements and schedule tweaks to draw more eyeballs. Having its biggest needle mover in form as major season arrives is vital to the LPGA’s push for growth. The talent is deep on the LPGA. Starpower raises the ceiling.
Nelly Korda looks like Nelly Korda again. But that doesn’t mean she rediscovered that 2024 feeling. This is something else.
“Every year is so different,” Korda said on Friday at the Ford. “I can’t even tell you similarities right now that I’m feeling what I felt two years ago. I just have a different feeling. Every year, you’re overcoming something, working on something different.”
For Korda, the work has seen her open the year 1-2-2. Those near-misses would’ve burned a searching Korda last year. But these have left her looking to the horizon, eager for what’s to come.
“[Caddie Jason McDede] was walking up 18, and he was like, ‘We’re playing some amazing golf. It’s not time to deflate, it’s time to inflate,’” Korda said on Sunday. “So continue moving on with the positives, and trying to keep putting myself into that position and knocking on the door.”
