Why Nelly Korda is using a children’s toy for her golf game

This time a year ago, everyone was looking to Nelly Korda. She had won four tournaments in a row and was about to win her fifth — this one a major championship at the Chevron. She was also about to attend the Met Gala and about to pose for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit and about to go through an exhausting summer of even more ups and a handful of downs. 

It was around this time last year that Korda began to show the world that she doesn’t want to lean all the way in to the media circus that began brewing around her. That she needs a break from it all at times, and she often seeks it in her family, sometimes with trips to the Rocky Mountains or even to the Czech Republic. 

That was 2024, and here in 2025, Korda is dealing with a slightly less manic circus. She hasn’t won yet, for starters. But she’s finding new ways to mentally pull herself away from her golf on a daily basis. She’s started playing with … LEGOs. 

That’s right, the interlocking pieces of plastic that children use to make figurines of all shapes and sizes. Korda teased the idea publicly for the first time at last week’s LPGA stop in LA. 

“I’ve always loved LEGOs,” Korda said when asked about her new (or old!) hobby. “Like I actually started earlier this year and it’s just another way to get your mind off things.

“I mean, you can go home when you’re at tournaments, read a book or you can go watch your favorite show, but when you’re not really interested in any of those two things, it’s just another way to kind of get your mind off of golf.”

Korda stays in rental homes while on the road and has been cramming in LEGO time when she’s away from the course. She completed three designs during her tournament week in Arizona last month, and says she plans to just purchase kits and leave them in the houses when she moves on. When she’s back home in Florida, she has a bigger set she’s compiling in her free time. 

This week, she plans to make her father do LEGOs with her. And if she’s lucky the world will continue getting out there and she won’t have to buy them all herself. Just last week, a fan sent her a MacLaren car LEGO kit. It’s part of a distancing strategy that Korda incorporates when she leaves the golf course. The less golf talk, it seems, the better for her. And LEGOs are not a completely childish enterprise after all. 

In recent years, LEGO has branched out with adult versions of its plastic bricks and found that all kinds of people are looking for a creative mental release. As evidenced in this conversation by a psychology professor at the University of Arizona, the act of building LEGO sets or similar activities pushes the human brain toward spontaneity. The superfluous nature of a toy made for children — that can still challenge adults — helps us let go of the stresses of the rest of life, like the workplace. 

For Korda, it’s one of the more stressful workplaces, trying to compete (and win) at the very highest level of a mentally demanding sport. It’s her “form of entertainment” that has her attention right now much more than a book or a TV show. Her favorite design thus far was an orchid she build recently. But there will probably be some competition for that title arriving in the mail before long.