PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Most weeks we have no clue who will win. The oddsmakers list their educated guesses, but it’s all based on single-digit percentages. But some weeks, the storylines coalesce around a single character. At the U.S. Women’s Open, that’s Nelly Korda.
The question Korda faces Sunday is the same one she faced Thursday morning when she played her first hole. It’s the same one she faced Tuesday morning when she gave her pre-tournament press conference. It’s very simple:
Are you able to summon a victory the one week you need it the most?
Why does she need this one most? Because form isn’t forever. Because she’s playing the best golf of her life. Because she’s won a Gold medal but never her national championship. Because the next U.S. Women’s Open at historic Riviera isn’t on the calendar and these moments can pass by quickly if you don’t stamp your name all over them.
For more than 10 years, Rory McIlroy failed to get the job done at Augusta National, and stayed one victory shy of the career Grand Slam. Then the dam broke. He’s now won there twice in a row.
Lydia Ko could just accept the podium at the 2024 Olympics. She needed to be on top of the podium at the Paris Games, to not only join the LPGA Hall of Fame, but to polish off the medal slam. Silver in 2016, Bronze in 2021, it was Gold or nothing in 2024. She won the Gold. Then she won at St. Andrews a couple weeks later.
Scottie Scheffler will have (it seems) a bunch more chances to win the U.S. Open, starting in two weeks at Shinnecock — in order to claim his career Grand Slam — but until he does it, we’ll be wondering, can he do it? When he’ll do it. IF he can do it.
That’s how it goes with the game’s best players. They go through valleys and reach peaks all the time. It comes and goes and they understand that. But when the golf is great, how great can it be? These are the questions we ask. In press conferences, in clubhouses and in Hall of Fame speeches 20 years from now. How memorable will this stretch of Nelly Korda golf be? It starts Sunday afternoon, in a position not too dissimilar from where we were 12 months ago.
When she turned to the back nine, last year at Erin Hills, Korda was one stroke back of Maja Stark. In hindsight, all she needed was one under on the finishing stretch. She shot one over.
“I really, really wanted it,” Korda said Saturday night, thinking back. “And the more you want it, sometimes the more you stiffen up and you get a little bit more nervous.”
She says she plays her best golf when she’s free. When she’s joking around and happy. That’s the attitude she wants to bring to the final round. But how possible is that? Her game hasn’t been perfect this week. She’s been working through different swing thoughts and advice from her team.
When it kicks off Sunday, a journey of sorts will have narrowed to a really tight place. The biggest crowd of the week will be following her and they’ll pinch in around the 1st tee in front of the historic clubhouse. If you rewound the clock to January 1 and asked her to visualize her 2026 season, she’d imagine herself teeing off for the final round at Riviera with the lead. She’s there now, and it’s no accident. The days between Jan. 1 and June 7, at least golf-wise, have been nearly perfect. Three wins, three second-place finishes, top 10 everywhere. It’s indisputably the best golf of her life and some of the best golf we’ve ever seen.
But what if it doesn’t end in a victory?