On paper, Nelly Korda’s 2026 season hardly seems real.
In her first six starts, Korda has three wins and three runner-up finishes. Because two of the second-place finishes came in Hyo Joo Kim’s wins, Korda has more wins in 2026 than there are players who have finished ahead of her (Solheim Cup teammate Lauren Coughlin, in Las Vegas, is next).
Korda’s sprint back to the top Rolex World Ranking has her shoulders rubbed with legends. She is one of only two players since 1980 to start an LPGA season with six consecutive top-2 finishes, joining Annika Sorenstam (2001). Sorenstam won eight times that season.
According to Elias Sports Bureau, Korda is the first player since then Lorena Ochoa in 2008 to win an LPGA Tour by four strokes or more in consecutive weeks. Her victory in Mexico was the 18th of her LPGA career, making her the youngest American player to reach the milestone since Nancy Lopez in 1980.
The rarefied air that Korda breathes is now reserved for all time. So what separates it from its peers? Where does she get her biggest advantages on the court?
Let’s break down what has made Nelly Korda so hard to beat.
Approach to the game (especially from the rough)
of Korda angle of attack with her irons is vital to her success, especially this season. While missing fairways off the tee on par-4s and 5s this year, Korda has continued to hit the green in regulation at a 68.0% rate. Not only is she the highest on Tour among qualified players, the gap between her and her peers is huge. Any player not named Nelly Korda hits the green in that situation only 51.8% of the time.
This aspect of Korda’s iron game has led to the most impressive strokes gained numbers of her career. From 2022 to the 2025 season, Nelly averaged 0.35 strokes gained per round. She won strokes with her approach game in 62.8% of her overall rounds and won at least one full stroke in 32.7% of them. This season, Korda is on another planet when it comes to that metric. She leads the LPGA in putts gained, earning an impressive 1.97 per round. She has won strokes with her approach game in all but one round – and won a stroke or more 83.3% of the time.
Over the previous three seasons, players on the LPGA Tour won three or more strokes with their approach game in about 4% of the overall rounds played. In 2025, Nelly is doing so at an astounding 22% clip.
Short game ability
On the relatively rare occasion that Korda has missed the green in regulation this season, her short game has been brilliant. She is getting up and down at a 75.0% clip so far in 2026, the best rate of any player on the LPGA. What was once a bit of a blemish on her statistical profile has now joined her elite skill set: As of 2022, Korda ranked outside the top-100 in hitting percentage. Last season, it ranked 55th (57.7%).
of Korda bunker game has been a big reason in the improvement. From 2022 to 2025, she ranked anywhere from 72nd to 138th on the LPGA in green save percentage. Through her victory in Mexico, she is 11-for-16 from the green, good for the third-best rate on Tour.
All of this has helped create one of her most impressive statistical achievements in 2026: an odd-or-worse 7.97%. Not only is that the lowest rate on the LPGA, but it’s also more than 4 percentage points better than anyone else. Haeran Ryu and Miyu Yamashita rank second lowest, at 12.26%. Korda made just seven combined bogeys in her back-to-back wins in Houston and Mexico.
Korda already has six bogey-free rounds this season, tied with Chizzy Iwai for most on the LPGA Tour. She was only four all last season and didn’t record her second of the season until October.
Par-5 dominance
Korda’s length off the tee has always given him a greater ability to take advantage of par-5 scoring opportunities. In her 18 LPGA wins, she is a combined 160 under par-5. In each of the previous five seasons, she has ranked either first or second on the tour that season in par-5 performance.
Yet somehow, in 2026, Korda has found a way to be even more dominant in the par 5s. She is ranked in the top-5 in the field in points-5 scoring in all six of her starts. She did that in just four tournaments all of last season – when she tied for the best par-5 scoring average on the LPGA Tour! Korda currently averages 4.34 strokes per par-5 played, a full tenth of a stroke better than anyone else and nearly three-tenths of a stroke better than the LPGA average.
Korda was in double figures at par-5 in just two tournaments all of last season. This year she has already done so four times in six starts.
Korda will enter this week’s event, the Kroger Queen’s City Championships, with a season average of 68.04. For Elias, that’s the second-best scoring average of any player through the first 23 rounds of a given season since 1980. Only Ochoa in 2008 (67.87) has had a better start to scoring after a year.
What we are witnessing this season from Nelly Korda is a great athlete at the top of her craft.
Suck it up.
;)
