Reigning gold medal champion Nelly Korda is in the clubhouse after round one of the women's golf tournament at the 2024 Olympics. Korda started slow with three bogeys on the first seven holes but bounced back with a trio of birdies in the middle of her round that left her at even through 18 at Le Golf National. Korda sits tied for 13th place with more than a dozen other golfers going into Thursday's second round. Fellow American Rose Zhang is one of those in the field tied at even par. Team USA's Lilia Vu had the best day of any American Thursday. The former UCLA Bruin sits in a four-way tie for third place and is five strokes behind leader Celine Boutier (7-under).
Beyond the proverbial thrills of victory and agonies in defeat, the Olympics also provide valuable life lessons and 2024 in Paris is no exception. There may not be a better and higher-profile example than American gymnast Simone Biles‘ conversations about her mental health from Tokyo all the way through her tremendous Games this summer, and the world’s No. 1 women’s golfer is bringing her bigger picture thoughts from the tour to the Olympics on Wednesday.
Nelly Korda shot a 72 on Day 1 of women’s golf at the 2024 Paris Olympics, well off the minus-7 from hometown hero Celine Boutier. But she’s feeling good in general thanks to great atmosphere at Le Golf National as well as a previous break from the game that’s allowed her to focus on what matters most.
“It feels nice when you’re in a groove, but when you play under pressure and you’re in the final group, and you feel the emotions that you do, it takes a toll on you mentally,” Korda said after the round. “I wrapped it up at the beginning of the year, and with all these big events in the middle of the year, it feels like I pretty much played five majors in a row, and my next event is a major. It’s just a lot. So just trying to take a mental break is also nice. But a lot of people don’t see what we do when we are not at tournaments and I practise a lot. I work out in the gym, and I just try to stay sharp that way.”
Korda, 26, is part of a huge sports family that understands pressure. Her parents are former professional tennis players, her brother plays tennis on the ATP tour, and her older sister competes with her on the LPGA Tour. So her support group is, as they ought to be, quite supportive. And family’s been big for her during the busy times and the breaks, like the one she took for several weeks earlier this year.
“Burnouts are very easy,” Korda said. “It’s easy to just push through it and just tell yourself, you know, ‘Just grind it out’. But as important as it is to grind it out, it’s important to put your clubs away and just be a regular human being. For me, it was like I finally realized that everything that I did at the start of the year, I kind of enjoyed it a little bit more with my family. I realized how big of an accomplishment that is, and that life and golf and everything is such a roller-coaster that it’s good to step away and appreciate the whole journey.”
Korda, of course, knows plenty about the aforementioned thrills of victory, having won gold in Tokyo. She’s well-prepared to make a run in Paris as she eyes Boutier’s top spot. The silver medal pace is closer (4-under) and bronze is two strokes away from Korda.
A Global Icon in the Making
At just 26 years old, Nelly Korda, the current number one female golfer in the world, has made a lot of history in a sport where lore takes on an almost reverential tone—all those names painted on locker-room boards and etched on centuries-old silver trophies. For one: Korda already has an Olympic gold medal, from Tokyo 2020. She is currently one of just two such competitors alive with that honor, as before the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, women’s golf had been absent from the Olympics for (a shocking) 116 years. And earlier in 2024, Korda won five consecutive LPGA Tour events, which culminated with her second Major victory at the Chevron Championship held in The Woodlands, Texas. In taking that tournament, Korda tied Annika Sorenstam and Nancy Lopez for the longest professional streak ever in her discipline. The feat made global headlines and propelled Korda’s public image into a whole new stratosphere. She now has nearly a million followers on Instagram and retains prestigious partners, among them Tumi, the luggage brand, and Goldman Sachs.
“My favorite part of all of this, this entire journey, is seeing all the little kids who come up to me, telling me how I’ve inspired them to pick up the game,” Korda says of her increasing success (and fame) over a Zoom call from her hometown of Sarasota, Florida, in late July. “The challenge of it, though, is being under more of a microscope,” she adds. “I’m going to make big mistakes, I’m going to make smaller mistakes, and all of it gets kind of amplified…but the good far outweighs the bad.” Her 2024 run has also, in part, brought newer eyes to women’s golf in general, which Korda notes has advanced significantly over the past decade.
“It has been incredible to see not just the audiences that we get, but the respect from sponsors in putting us on prestigious golf courses. That helps bring in a crowd. And I’d say, obviously, compared to the [men’s] PGA Tour, with their prize money and their TV deals, we have room for improvement, but I always say small goals lead to big goals.” For example, Golfweek reported that when the 2023 US Women’s Open was held for the first time at Pebble Beach Golf Links—a world-renowned course in California—the final round drew the most viewers ever for a LPGA tour event.
A Family Affair
Korda was born in Bradenton, Florida, and she hails from a sporting family. Her father, Pietr, won tennis’s Australian Open, and her mother, Regina, is also an ex-professional tennis player. Her older sister Jessica is on the LPGA Tour too, and her brother, Sebastian, is on tennis’s ATP Tour (congratulations are in order for Sebastian: He just won the Mubadala Citi Open in Washington, DC.) Korda has golfed since she was a child and became familiar with the LPGA all the way back in 2011, when her sister was a rookie on the circuit.
“I’ve always just loved the game of golf,” Korda says, looking back at what got her into it, and her favorite element that keeps her going. And, while a site’s visibility and lore do help bring in more people, she’s not necessarily personally precious about the pedigree of the course she’s playing (though, of course, Korda has her favorites). “I’ve always said I love the competition of the sport, whichever course I am on.”
Korda has played Augusta, perhaps the most famous course in the world (it’s the site of the men’s Masters Tournament and a club that had long been billed as men’s only, though there are a select few women members including former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice). The nearest and dearest to her heart is a place called Sebonack in Southampton, New York. “That was my first US Women’s Open,” Korda says, “and that was the first time I got to play alongside my sister in a professional event.” The year was 2013—Korda was just 14.
The Korda Routine
The athlete keeps a mostly strict—and consistent—routine, with gym and practice sessions six times per week and Sundays off. This thinking applied to her 2024 Olympic buildup too: “I’ll prepare the same way as I would for a regular event,” she says matter-of-factly. But she adds, “as important it is to grind, it’s also super, super important to give your body a break, so you’re fresh.”
She does have one thing she wants changed with the Olympics, though, outside of what’s been established: “I’ll have been sad to miss the opening ceremonies. The men are the first week and the women are always the second week, and the women miss the opening ceremony [as a result.] I feel like every other Olympics, they should switch us.” (A fair point!)
Korda appreciates the constant travel of her job—she’s a Delta Diamond Medallion, the airlines’ highest published frequent flier tier—and she’s often overstuffing her Tumi suitcases to the 70-pound mark (a perk her elite status affords her). And despite Tumi’s popularity, the odds of Korda’s luggage being mistaken for someone else’s at baggage claim are slim. “I love stickers,” she says. “Every place I go, every coffee shop that I go to, I try to look for cool stickers that I can add to my suitcases to personalize them.” She pauses. “I need a croissant sticker from Paris.”
Met Gala & the Paris Games
After the Olympics, Korda will jet east to Prague, where she has family and often spends part of her summer vacation. She says she’s been shopping for the trip—“I’m in a linen era”—which segues to her mentioning her love of Oscar de la Renta, the label that dressed her at this year’s Met Gala in May. “You know, five minutes before my hair and makeup team showed up, I changed the dress, I changed the entire look,” she confesses. “I think I [wanted to change it up] from the athletic side of wearing no makeup and not normally getting dressed up—I wanted to do a full glam look.”
Before her holiday, she has the Paris Games to get through. The golf competition is being held at Le Golf Nacional (which, fun fact, was co-designed by the late Robert von Hagge, who appeared in television commercials as the Marlboro Man before becoming an architect). American Scottie Scheffler won the men’s gold medal there on August 4, after charging back from fourth position, and after the leader, John Rahm, had a few late-round mistakes; Le Golf Nacional is no doubt a challenge.
How does Korda handle the nerves?
“I would say golf is almost 90% mental. Compared to every other sport, we have a lot of time to think…to overthink. But I’m extremely lucky. Not a lot of girls or people can say this in the game of golf, but I’ve had the same caddie [Jason McDede] for most of my career; having someone that you can rely on out there when things aren’t going well is so important. And there are going to be more lows than highs. You’re barely ever going to have your A game. I loved the speech that Roger Federer made when he said he lost more points than he won. That’s just sports. You’re going to lose more than you win, but the lows make you appreciate the highs—they’re what make you grind to get to that high again.”
The Croissant Sticker
Whether she leaves Paris with the high of another gold medal is one thing, but at the very least, we hope Korda finds herself that croissant sticker.
