Nelly Korda’s fall of world no. 1 does not mean what you think it is doing

Nelly Korda’s 17 months run as world no. 1-her sixth time on top of the Rolex-ranking-ending Monday when Jeeno Thitikul of Thailand officially overshadowed the American.

Korda’s fall from number 1 comes one day after she completed T36 on the AIG Women’s Open at Royal Porthcawl, with a large championship season ending in which she was not a weekend factor in four of the five tournaments. After having won seven times during a sizzling 2024 campaign, Korda still has to win this season. The LPGA has had 21 different winners in 20 events, but Korda has not yet lifted a trophy.

Korda’s drop to No. 2 will of course lead to big questions and thoughts about her season and what it says about the state of women’s golf and her place on top of the sport. In a society that is susceptible to Hyperbool, it would be easy to claim that the Windless season of Korda (so far) and falls from World No. 1 is an indictment of her talent or ability to be the wind in the sails of ladies’ golf.

But if you zoom out and make the balance of both of Kordas last two seasons and the nature of Golf, the answer is much easier.

Nelly Korda’s season

The first to be noted is that statistically Nelly Korda does not play a worse wave than a season ago. Songs can cheat, but last year, when she won seven times, the statistics of Korda were as follows:

Sold strokes: Total (LPGA rank): 2.84 (1)
Sold strokes: t -shirt to green: 1.88 (3)
Strokes value: off the tee: 0.87 (2)
Sold strokes: Approach: 0.59 (22)
Sold strokes: around the green: 0.42 (4)
Sold strokes: putting: 0.41 (34)
Birdie percentage: 24.37 (2)
Birdie or better percentage: 25.12 (2)
Bogey Avoidance: 13.06 % (5)

So far this season this season? They are not far away, and Korda has actually won better strokes per KPMG Performance Insights and won the strokes by putting averages than at the moment last season. Here are the figures in general this season so far:

Sold strokes: Total: 2.43 (3)
Sold strokes: t -shirt to green: 1.67 (4)
Strokes value: off the tee: 1.04 (1)
Sold strokes: Approach: 0.65 (16)
Sold strokes: around the green: -0.02 (81)
Sold strokes: putting: 0.80 (17)
Someone perccentage: 25.41 (1)
Birdie or better percentage: 25.77 (1)
Bogey Avoidance: 14.89 percent (23)

So, what do we make of a season that seems statistically, but has seven fewer victories and Korda to World No. 2 has seen it fall? First of all it is difficult to win in Golf. You need many things to go in your way, some of which are outside of your control.

In the first tournament of the season, the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, Korda went on a Sunday indictment that made her nine birdies while she shot a seven-under 65 while she tried to hunt a Lim Kim. That would have been enough to win a lot of tournaments, but Kim tasted three Birdies in her last four holes to keep Nelly and win with two.

Sometimes you are just defeated.

The same can be said for the US Women’s open this year, where Korda was the best player on it in Hills, but was plagued by a cold putter who lost 0.42 strokes during the week. Korda led the field that week in success of the Tee (1.82) and picked up a shot after approach shots (1.18), but the winner Maja Stark could not catch up on Sunday when her putter got cold. Korda’s heartache in Erin Hills was creepy similar to the loss of Rory McIlroy at the US Open 2023, where he could not fall on Sunday and a bad swing was the difference in a one -off loss for Wyndham Clark.

The downside of this coin is that since Korda’s T2 on Erin Hills, she has only one top 10 finish, a fifth place was open at the ISPS Handa Scottish. She finished T19 at the KPMG Women’s PGA championship in PGA Frisco, recorded a T43 in the Evian and a T36 last week in Royal Porthcawl. Add the T14 in the Chevron, where Korda has brought itself out of the battle with an opening round 77, and that is four out of five Majors in which the 27-year-old was not a factor in the weekend.

Last year Korda won the Chevron and T2 ended open at the Aig Women’s, where a brutal back has doomed her chances. While she missed the cut at the US Women’s Open and KPMG Women’s PGA, Korda only had four other tournaments the entire season where she finished outside the top 10. She is ready eight times outside the top 10 in 13 Starts this season.

“It has been a very interesting year for me,” Korda said in Hills. “Absolutely a bit good and a bit bad. A kind of mix of every event that I played. I would say that just patience is what I have learned, and a kind of going home and really locking and practicing.

“It’s golf,” she said at PGA Frisco prior to the KPMG Women’s PGA championship. “Every year is just so different. Last year, which came in this event, I had five victories. I think even Hannah Green also had several victories under her belt and came in this event. It’s just Golf. You just have to drive the Golf, and the competition gets better and better every year.”

Korda set an impossible high bar for herself last season. Winning seven times is a biter. Her game this season, although still statistically good, has been under that bar and even a tick below what should be expected of her on an annual basis. If she went without a win this season, then it would also be a bucket.

What to make of the Season of Korda

My colleague James Colgan had a great attraction in our Tour Confidential Roundtable and remembered what Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley said when he was asked about the impact of Caitlin Clark on the basketball of women and why the same did not happen for women’s golf when Korda won five tournaments in a row.

“We hope that more people will come along like (Clark), and we hope that people will come to Golf,” said Ridley, who then went to Riff about the Augusta National Women’s Amateur before he returns to his point about Clark. “But I just think it’s a kind of unicorn, really, we need more unicorns in that respect.”

Ridley’s comments were not very well received when Korda burned down every course she got on. But his point was that, whether it is Korda or not, the wave of women needs a transformational star to raise it to the next level. It needs a superstar to withdraw eyeballs.

Maybe Korda can still be. Maybe she is just a star, but not the “unicorn” that the game needs. Anyway, a dip in 2025 and a fall to no. 2 will not make a judgment about that question. It is nothing more than the ebb and golf stream. We have seen it rather countless times of great players. In 2017, Rory McIlroy, who had won seven times in two years, was Winless and dropped to the 11th in the world. After the season, the Noord -Irish star said that he played a nagging RIB edition, but he still finished T7 with the Masters and T4 in the open air, so his game was good enough to compete. Similarly, between November 2019 and May 2021, McIlroy went 25 events without a victory when he fell into the world until the ninth. He quickly rose back to the world No. 1 and has won 11 times worldwide since 2022. Every little dip encountered the game from McIlroy to larger heights when he worked to become a ‘more complete player’. The results followed.

There is every reason to believe that the same will apply to Korda. Whether that ink is bleeding in the larger whole can still be seen for women’s wave.