The Chevron Championship week in southeast Texas began with the world’s best player amid one of the most dominant stretches of play in the modern era. Nelly Korda had rattled off four wins in each of her last four starts, but the intense glare of the major championship spotlight is a different animal.
She couldn’t do it again, could she?
We ended Sunday learning Nelly has air-tight cannonball form.
Korda started the Sunday marathon at The Club at Carlton Woods with less-than 33% win probability according to KPMG Performance Insights. Her dramatic chip-in at No. 10 pushed that number over 90% and would never look back.
Korda’s Historic Brilliance
During her streak, Korda is gaining an absurd 3.60 strokes per round on the competition, and that doesn’t even include her three match-play victories in Las Vegas. She has made birdie or eagle on 28.7% of her total holes played and is 46-under on par 5s. When she has hit the fairway on a par 4 or 5, she has gone on to hit the green in regulation a ridiculous 86% of the time. At Carlton Woods, she only missed five of 42 greens all week after hitting the fairway.
Korda was excellent through the bag in her victory, ranking third in strokes gained tee-to-green, fourth around the green, sixth off the tee and 12th in putting. Her lead over second-ranked Lydia Ko in strokes gained total per round this season is now larger than the gap between Ko and the 13th-best player in that metric.
In what will be horrifying news for her fellow competitors, Korda still has room to get even better. This season, she has one of the lowest putt make percentages from 5 to 10 feet among qualified players. There are six players on the LPGA Tour this season making a higher rate of birdie opportunities than Korda is. She ranks 102nd on Tour in one-putts per round. Her ball-striking prowess is such that she easily overcomes a miscue or two per round on the greens.
Korda has tied the record for most consecutive victories in LPGA Tour history with five, matching the historic runs of Nancy Lopez in 1978 and Annika Sorenstam in late 2004 into 2005. In her next tournament, Korda will have an opportunity to do what no player has accomplished in LPGA history by winning a sixth start in a row. Neither Lopez nor Sorenstam finished in the top 10 the week they went for number six: Lopez finished tied for 13th at the 1978 Lady Keystone Open, while Sorenstam finished T12 at Kingsmill.
Only once in the previous seven LPGA Tour seasons was there an instance of a player winning five or more times in an entire season – Jin Young Ko, who had five victories in 2021. No American player had won five or more times in a single LPGA Tour season since Juli Inkster in 1999. Korda did both of those things in a span of just five tournaments.
No American player has won six times in a single LPGA Tour season since Beth Daniel racked up seven victories in 1990, eight years before Korda was born. The superlatives are seemingly endless, and with so much golf left on the schedule this year, one must wonder how high her star will ascend before 2024 is completed. Just 25, Korda is the youngest American player to win multiple majors since Inkster in 1984.
Coughlin’s Breakthrough
Before last week, Lauren Coughlin had a career scoring average in major championships of 73.4. While she undoubtedly was under the radar as a possible contender, several of her underlying statistics suggested that a big week was on the horizon.
KPMG Performance Insights provide a deeper understanding of the number of improvements in Coughlin’s game. She entered last week up 16 spots this season compared to 2023 in strokes gained total, 29 spots in strokes gained tee to green, and a whopping 76 spots in strokes gained putting. Though she didn’t yet have a top-five finish on the season, Coughlin had gained more than a stroke with her ball striking in almost half of her rounds played.
In Houston, Coughlin put everything together, gaining more than six strokes on the field in both round one and round four. In the final round, she gained strokes in every facet of her game, showcasing the improvements those statistics suggested. Coughlin’s tie for third place moved her into ninth in the U.S. Solheim Cup standings.
Third Round to Remember
The round of the week belonged to Brooke Henderson, whose lightning-interrupted 64 wrapped up with one last hole on Sunday morning. Henderson gained more than 7.5 shots on the competition in the round, by far her most to date in 2024. In rounds one and two, the Canadian star made a combined 107 feet of putts. She made an astronomical 139 feet worth in round three.
Henderson already has more top-10 finishes this season (five) than she did in all of 2023 on the LPGA Tour. She is one of just three players averaging two or more strokes gained per round in 2024, alongside Korda and Lydia Ko. She has had more rounds this year where she was five or more strokes better than the field (four) than she has rounds where she lost strokes (three).
Off the tee, Henderson’s incremental improvements have started to add up. Henderson is hitting the fairway at a 4% higher rate than last year yet has not sacrificed any length with driver. That has led to her gaining 0.74 strokes off the tee per round this season, more than doubling what she did in 2023 and ninth best of any player on the LPGA Tour.
If anybody is going to stop Nelly Korda next month at Lancaster Country Club, Henderson is as good a candidate as any. The U.S. Women’s Open begins on May 30.
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