NAPLES, Fla. – Nelly Korda left the course on Thursday frustrated and went straight to practice putting green.
A day of burnt edges and a season of being on the other side of golf’s “fine line” will have this effect. Korda hit the ball well during the first round of the CME Group Tour Championship, but finished the day seven shots behind first-round leader Somi Lee.
Korda arrived at practice putting the green to work out of frustration, but didn’t last long. The World No. 2 put the ball in the hole a few times and it came out.
That was all he needed.
“I went to the locker room for five minutes and I saw some balls roll into the hole, which was good,” Korda said Friday in the. Tiburon Golf Club.
She arrived in the first group Friday morning with a lot of ground to make up. In a season defined by what she hasn’t done, Korda provided a stirring reminder that, when everything is clicking, she is the dominant force in women’s golf.
Korda opened with back-to-back birdies and added another in the sixth before hitting the tee shot. But she pulled away with three straight birdies and then closed out her round by bogeying three of her last four holes to shoot a second-round eight-under 64 and take the outright lead – a sign that world No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul would eclipse an hour later en route to a 36-hole lead.
Korda hit all 14 fairways, hit 16 of 18 greens in regulation and reached the Greg Norman-designed course in 26 shots. The burnt edges that frustrated Korda on Thursday were replaced by bird cheers from fans in Naples.
Friday’s round was one in which all of Korda’s changes came together to deliver a fascinating display of golf.
She worked to keep things simple. That can be difficult after a disappointing round at the end of a frustrating season. But Korda stuck to her routine and didn’t let a rough Thursday throw her off. cordage changed the bars last weekgoing to the larger and more forgiving TaylorMade P7CBs in 6-PW. Korda, who is one of the best ball hitters in the world, was looking for more spin with her irons after a season of her approach shots not hitting the greens where she thought they would.
“The irons were coming in a little steeper and softer, which I’ve been playing well this year and landing the ball where I want,” Korda said Friday. “I’ve just seen a little more release than usual.
“With the different changes in golf course conditions, I mean, it is. Last year, maybe some of the golf courses we were playing were a little bit softer, so I was able to stop it. This year they were more on the firmer side, so they were just releasing. So I was a little frustrated that I didn’t want the ball to react. really well.”
Korda has also worked to avoid being fired at the top of golf this year. It’s hard to get too technical while you’re trying to lift a trophy. But the few weeks Korda took to rest, a neck ailment also allowed her to work on her swing without worrying about the numbers on a card.
That work seems to have paid off.
“I think you work towards something every year,” Korda said. “That’s just kind of golf. I mean, when you play a few weeks in a row in different conditions, for me, because I’m tall, when I play with a lot of wind, it starts to swing a lot, so then I go back to the old trends. Just always working on the old trends, which is nice for golf and also fru.”
“Frustrating” is a word that has come up a lot in Korda’s presser this season, especially at the back as she chases her first win of the year. Her stats are similar to her dominant 2024 season, where she won seven times, including five straight starts. She has it has just been one LESS here and LESS far away there. The green part of her game has been top notch. She is second on the LPGA in Strokes Gained: Total, first off the tee and 17th in approach. Her game around the green has dropped from 2024 (0.42 strokes gained to 0.09), but her putting has been a point better (0.41 in 2024 to 0.60 in 2025).
To hear Korda tell it (and tell it and tell it), the golf gods just haven’t been on her side this year. Sometimes it’s just not your round, your tournament, your year.
“I’m very, very competitive and what I want to do on Sunday is lift the trophy. Everyone in this field wants to do that,” Korda said in last week’s Annika. “It’s definitely been a weird year, but I can’t compare this year to last year. … It’s just sports. It’s golf. You can’t expect to win. You can expect to put 100%: 100% into your body, 100% into your routine, 100% into your practice and have no distractions that I can control. My control.”
Asked before the tournament about a year in which the stats said one thing and the win column said another, Korda smiled and laughed, noting that he sometimes has negative thoughts because he is both human and golfer. These two things always go hand in hand when the dances are not going your way.
But frustration and disappointment are different. Korda feels the former perhaps more than she does. But the World No. 2 understands that in a game won and lost by thin margins, sometimes the smallest thing can make all the difference.
“It’s honestly a fine line,” Korda said Wednesday. “Sometimes it comes down to one shot. It’s like a lip putt and you don’t get your momentum. It’s such a fine line when it comes to golf. I’m not disappointed with the season. Obviously I would have liked to lift some trophies.
“I still have one more week. You never know what’s going to happen. But with golf it’s literally all about inches and it could go the other way.”
A year of frustration for Korda led him to Friday at Tiburon Golf Course, where everything finally clicked, putting him in position to change the narrative and wash away a year of burnt edges, near misses and unanswered questions.
Two rounds between Nelly Korda and a different story 2025.
;)
