Korda in a groove
After slow start, top-ranked player one shot back in bid for a fifth straight win
THE WOODLANDS — Nancy Lopez knows what it’s like to go on a winning streak on the LPGA Tour.
Lopez won five tournaments in a row in 1978 when she was 21 and became the Sports Illustrated cover girl of golf. Only Annika Sorenstam has matched that streak when she won the last two events of 2004 and the first three of 2005.
Nelly Korda has won four in a row and is going for her fifth this week at the Chevron Championship, the first major of the season.
Through two rounds, she is in position to match Lopez and Sorenstam. Korda is at 7 under after a 69 and held the lead for most of the day.
Korda wound up one behind Atthaya Thitikul, a 21-year-old from Thailand who won her first pro event at age 14, and Jin Hee Im, a rookie on the LPGA Tour from Korea. Thitikul and Im are at 8 under after each shooting 67 on the Jack Nicklaus Course at Carlton Woods.
Still, the focus remains on Korda and her streak.
“When you’re playing that kind of golf, the fairways get wider, the hole gets bigger and your confidence gets better,” said Lopez, who joined the NBC broadcast here on Friday. “Nelly knows what she’s going to do, she visualizes the perfect shots and you have really positive feelings.”
Korda wasn’t perfect in her second round but the confidence was easy to see, especially after a mistake, of which there were few.
Take the first two holes, for example. Korda hit into a bunker off the tee and then her second shot stayed in. It led to a double bogey on the opening par 4. No problem. She followed with a birdie on the second and another on the fourth.
A bogey on No. 7, a par 3. No worries. Birdies on the next two holes.
“That was fun,” Korda said of her first hole. “Then I bounced back with a birdie and made birdie on the following par 5.
“I actually didn’t feel bad at all. Sometimes when you start to make mistakes, you just don’t really feel confident or you don’t feel that great. But I just told myself that it’s the first hole. Even though I may have made a double, there is still so much golf to be played. So that’s usually what I think about … the opportunities that I have ahead.”
Korda’s only real trouble on the back nine came on No. 14 when she pushed her drive into the high rough on the right side. She could only get back to the left side of the fairway, some 90 yards from the hole. Her wedge to the green left her 10 feet from the hole. She made the putt as the ball circled the back of the hole before dropping in as she exhaled with a sigh of relief.
“Making sure that I don’t get too down on myself is really important during a major,” she said. “It takes a lot of patience to win. At the end of the day, the person that makes the least mistakes or recovers best from their mistakes usually ends up winning.”
Korda finished with a birdie on the par-5 18th to get to 7 under with a 69.
“I’m just at the halfway point right now,” Korda said. “The amount of golf I’ve played, I still have that to go. There is still a lot of golf left, and anything can happen.”
Korda’s run has the LPGA hopeful it can do the same for women’s golf as Caitlin Clark did for women’s basketball the last two years at Iowa.
“People love to follow a star,” LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan said. “So I think we all know that and we all recognize that. We want to make sure Nelly Korda can reach her peak performance also. It’s a lot of pressure on an athlete, but she’s handled it extremely well.”
Korda’s competitors recognize what’s going on.
“Superstar,” said Hae Ran Ryu, who is one stroke behind.
Said amateur Lottie Woad, who recently won the Augusta Women’s Amateur and is 4 under in her first pro event: “I’m kind of scared to go up to her … to win four in a row is insane.”
While acknowledging the talent of international players on the LPGA Tour, Lopez said “it’s important for me to watch an American player win on tour … brings a lot of people to golf.”