Now a three-time major champion, Nelly Korda reclaimed the No. 1 spot on the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings (WWGR) after a dominant victory at the season’s first major, The Chevron Championship.
Korda was on fire throughout the weekend at Memorial Park Golf Club, maintaining a steady lead that never saw anyone get closer than four shots. In the final round, she opened with a birdie to extend her advantage to five ahead of Thailand’s Patty Tavatanakit.
Tavatanakit birdied the same hole, then mirrored the American again as both birdied the 3rd. She made another at the 6th, but bogeyed the 8th while Korda parred her way through the front nine. Her first bogey came at the 12th, but back-to-back birdies soon followed to cancel out the setback. Although she bogeyed the penultimate, the now world No. 1 closed with a par which was more than enough to secure a convincing five-shot victory and pocket the $1.35 million first prize.
“It’s not easy going in with that big of a lead,” said Korda. “I think that was the challenging point with like, where do I still play like Nelly and where do I play a little defensive?”
“What I was telling myself was I really want to hoist this trophy because I want to show the kids at home that it’s OK to miss short putts and still win a major championship,” she went on with a laugh. “You’re going to make mistakes. You have to mentally still be in it 100%, and that’s really what I wanted to show.
“I wanted to show it to myself and I wanted to show it to everyone looking up to me.”
As well as returning to the top of the WWGR, the victory marks her 17th career LPGA Tour title, and her third major, after winning this event in 2024 and the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in 2021.
She becomes the first American since Meg Mallon in 2000 to have three majors to her name. But word among the weekend crowd was also fixed on whether Korda would make it into the event’s history books. The Floridian looked to be on course to breaking Dottie Pepper’s 1999 72-hole scoring record but played it safe with mostly pars and finished just one short of Pepper’s Mission Hill record at 18-under 270.
However, Korda did become the first player to achieve multiple major victories with scores of 18 under or over in LPGA history and only the third player in 50 years to claim a wire-to-wire triumph in a major while leading by multiple shots following each round, joining Juli Inkster (1989) and Amy Alcott (1991).
She also moves closer to entering the LPGA Tour Hall of Fame increasing her overall points total to 22 and now just five points shy of automatically qualifying for that exclusive circle.
Tavatanakit tied for second alongside China’s Ruoning Yin on 13 under. Just a shot adrift on 12 under came Korea’s Ina Yoon and China’s Yan Liu in a share for fourth.
What is the next event?
The next event on the LPGA Tour is the Mexico Riviera Maya Open at Mayakoba taking place between April 30 – May 3 at Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo in Mexico.