This week sees the men’s US Open at Pinehurst. More from me about that next week. Also next week it’s the Women’s PGA Championship at Sahalee Country Club in Washington state, and events at the recent US Women’s Open nudged me into writing about two of the American competitors there: Nelly Korda and Lexi Thompson.
Korda, aged 25, is the No. 1-ranked woman golfer in the world. She has amassed over twice the average points of the second-ranked player, Lilia Vu. Not only that, the gap between her and Vu is wider than that between Vu and the bottom of the pack. (We won’t go there!) This extraordinary sense of supremacy has largely been built upon the fact that heading into the US Open at the Lancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania in late May, Korda had won on six of her previous seven starts. To state the obvious, that is Tiger-like dominance. All that remained for her to do, surely, was turn up and win her third major.
But as we know, golf doesn’t work like that. On just her third hole of the championship she ran up a septuple-bogey 10. She shot a 10-over-par round of 80. By bizarre coincidence, her last round in the Women’s Open had also been an 80, on the fourth day at Pebble Beach last year. “I am human; I am going to have bad days,” she said after the ordeal was over. “I played some really solid golf up to this point.” That’s some understatement. You are perhaps aware that her (usually) aesthetically pleasing swing has earned her the nickname of ‘Nelly the Elegant’. I’m sure that after missing the cut at Lancaster she could hardly wait to stick her sticks in the trunk. And I’m sure that next week on the west coast she will be determined to win the PGA for a second time.
Also eager, for different reasons, will be Lexi Thompson, who missed the Open cut by an even bigger margin than did Korda. She first made a name for herself in 2007 by becoming the youngest-ever qualifier for the US Women’s Open. She was 12 years old. Last month, she announced she was quitting. “It is time. At the end of 2024, I will be stepping away from a full professional golf schedule.”
Related: Nelly Korda wins fifth consecutive title and second Major
Thompson won 11 times on the LPGA Tour and was a top-10 ranked player for the best part of a decade. What seems odd is that she only won one major - the 2014 Kraft Nabisco (now the Chevron Championship) - even though she managed to accumulate 18 other top-10 finishes. Still, as frustrating as that no doubt is, it’s something Monty or Lee Westwood would probably kill for! Perhaps she and Korda will join forces one last time in September at the Solheim Cup? Either way, 29 seems young to call it a day.
On the other hand, arguably the greatest-ever golfer did just that aged 28. Having completed the ‘Impregnable Quadrilateral’ (the original Grand Slam) in 1930, Bobby Jones quit competitive golf. It wasn’t to be this year but Nelly Korda may have her mind on winning all five of the women’s majors next season. And she’s not 26 until next month.
You can follow Robert Green on Twitter @robrtgreen and enjoy his other blog f-factors.com
