Nelly Korda’s latest achievement may be her most impressive yet

What a year it has been for Nelly Korda, who has risen to the highest levels of golf and also suffered some very low lows. The term roller-coaster seems to fit, given how it had gone up, up and upfollowed by immersion down, down and down. Because now, if you were waiting for another reminder of her dominance, it has arrived – albeit in a slightly different form than this year’s previous wins.

Korda was named the Rolex Player of the Year on Monday, a statistical formality that finally approximates rather than a majority vote of her peers. But what it tells you now is not so much that her season was the best season, but that it was unequivocally dominant. She did more in just 14 events than the other dominant players in 20.

In recent months you could have poked a hole in Korda’s CV for 2024 and argued for someone else. Lydia Ko won the biggest events – at the Olympics and the AIG Women’s Open — and finalized her place in the LPGA Hall of Fame as a result. Jeeno Thitikul has a slight edge over Korda in scoring average and hits earned. Korda is the only player to have earned more than $3 million this year, but others will join her in the coming weeks.

That’s all well and good for the LPGA product — some parity in the face of a dominant force — but the counting stats and timing of events tend to forget that Korda has only played 14 tournaments this year. And in those 14 weeks, she won almost half the time. And with three rounds left, it doesn’t matter if Lydia Ko or Ayaka Furue shoot 30-under every time they do it. They won’t accumulate enough points to steal the LPGA’s year-end honor.

Unlike the PGA Tour or countless other sports leagues that select a Player of the Year or MVP, the LPGA awards points for specific achievements during a given season. Whoever finishes with the most points at the end of the year is POY. It’s the most meritocratic system you can imagine, one that doesn’t take into account a player’s relationship with the media or his peers and simply pushes forward the player who has checked the most boxes.

Over the course of a season, players earn POY points for every top-10 finish they have, with first place earning 30 points and second place earning 12, up to one point for a 10th-place finish. These points have been doubled during five major championships. And during most seasons, the POY race comes down to the wire, with the winner usually amassing 160 to 240 points at the end of the season.

Korda has been sitting on a winning streak bigger than that for more than two months and mostly hasn’t had to play any extra golf to cement her status. Korda earned 180 points in six wins from January to May alone, which would have been good enough to earn her POY honors in 2022 and 2017. Add in her top three and she has 244 points POY while barely leaving the United States.

This last part is a context that will be forgotten in time. But it’s part of what makes this season so impressive. Korda notably did not play an event in Asia this year, a longtime staple of the LPGA schedule. She has been battling a neck injury in recent weekswhich kept her home-bound, and she switched to Asia earlier in the year as well – in favor of family and training time in the Czech Republic.

While some of her peers endured another grueling travel season, Korda played just three tournaments from late May to late July due in part to a dog bite injury. That stretch included three missed cuts (two of them coming in majors), before she righted her ship with a runner-up finish at the Women’s Open in St. Louis. Andrews.

Both Ariya Jutanugarn and Jin Young Ko have won the award early in recent years, but they did so playing 26 and 21 events respectively. Korda did it in just 14. She’ll make two more starts this month in Florida, bringing her total to 16. A truly dominant 16, better than anyone, no matter what happens between now and then. on Thanksgiving, capping off a season we won’t soon forget.