CHASKA, Minn. — Nelly Korda’s newest cease this significantly busy summer season is the Ladies’s Skilled Golf Championship in Minnesota, the place the world’s top-ranked participant will attempt to win her third straight main trophy this week.
From profitable the U.S. Ladies’s Open in California to taking part in in pairs on the Dow Championship in Michigan to constructing the game’s model in New York, the 27-year-old Korda has had little time to relaxation.
If that is the worth to pay for stardom, she’ll gladly take it.
“I really feel like it doesn’t matter what I do in life, whether or not it is in finance or this job, the extra I put myself in that place, the extra comfy I really feel,” Korda stated Wednesday at Hazeltine Nationwide Golf Membership. “I feel the largest change I have been telling myself is simply to be genuine and who I’m. Whether or not that is thought of nice or not, I simply wish to be genuine.”
Korda, who has greater than $5.3 million in prize cash this yr, received 4 of the 9 tournaments he competed in and completed exterior of the highest 10 solely as soon as. She leads Kim Hyo-joo by a mean of 1.15 strokes within the Vale Trophy race for the bottom common rating on the LPGA.
The one ladies to win the primary three majors of the season are Inbee Park in 2013 and Babe Zaharias in 1950, when there have been solely three gamers on the schedule. The ultimate two main tournaments will now be held in Europe. The Evian Championship can be held in France from July ninth to twelfth, and the Ladies’s British Open can be held in England from July thirtieth to August thirtieth. 2.
With April’s Chevron Championship win already on the scorecards, Korda earned a one-stroke victory over Charlie Hull and Gabby Lopez at this month’s U.S. Ladies’s Open. It took some self-control to meet a promise to play with companion Olivia Cowan within the Dow Championship the next week.
“I used to be so drained. To be trustworthy, I could not sleep. Each time I wakened within the morning, I did not wish to get up,” Korda stated. “I am nonetheless slightly drained.”
She was then whisked away to New York for a whirlwind media tour on behalf of the LPGA, returning final week to recharge and refresh.
“It’s enjoyable to be on completely different levels in entrance of various folks, one thing that helps the sport of golf and places us on an even bigger stage,” Korda stated.
From a cameo on the “Right now” present to a go to to the New York Inventory Change and an look in Occasions Sq., Korda relished the prospect to point out the hilarious and self-proclaimed “silly” aspect of his persona to a extra mainstream viewers final week.
LPGA Tour Commissioner Craig Kessler stated, “That is what we’d like from our athletes to develop transcendent stars who will break by means of the game and discover their manner into the tradition.” “She did it. She’s doing it.”
The most important, final held in 2019 at Hazeltine, a prairie suburb southwest of Minneapolis, has a complete prize purse of $13 million this yr, the biggest in ladies’s golf historical past.
“It is fairly unimaginable to see the ladies’s recreation evolve the best way it has now,” Korda stated. “We see it in each sport. We see it in tennis and now in basketball. The funding in ladies’s sports activities is wonderful and we’re actually grateful to our companions for all the time elevating the bar.”
