Nelly Korda’s major season starts with Chevron dud

A funny thing happens when you watch Nelly Korda: You begin to think that golf is easy.

The truth, of course, is quite the opposite. Golf is so endlessly complicated, so foolishly complex, that it is often likened to life: impossible to master, but worth doing anyway.

Nelly Korda reminded us of both of these facts on Thursday at the Chevron Championship — the same day she arrived on site as the tournament’s reigning champion fresh off a major season that declared her the definitive star of women’s professional golf, and the same day she shot an opening-round 77 to fall to 118th place in a field of 132.

Korda’s game looked easy as usual on a stifling Chevron Thursday, her face still cool and disaffected, her drives still piercing and straight, her approaches still slinging like a desk toy on a perfect pendulum from backswing to follow-through. But when the scores added up, it was clear something was amiss. Korda, the best player in the world, had gotten beat by almost everybody.

The first clues of her eventual undoing on Thursday at Carlton Woods were evident in her press conference on Tuesday, when Korda let slip that she was struggling with her putter.

“Just need my putter to click a little bit more to make those putts,” Korda said. “I think that’s where it’s been lacking — the putts that I was making last year, I’m just not making as many this year.”

Her putting woes were, it turned out, only on the brink of getting worse. Korda recorded a whopping 33 putts in Thursday’s opening round, three shots more than her season-long average of 29.69, and nine more than opening-round leader Haeran Ryu. She left Carlton Woods separated by 12 shots from Ryu, and with work to do just to see her title defense through to the weekend in Texas — potentially her third MC at a major championship in the last 12 months.

These kind of swings are not unusual for a pro golfer — even one with Korda’s penchant for making the hard look easy. Still, they are the kind of swings that can be harder for a player of Korda’s newfound profile. When you’re a good player, your peaks are highlighted; when you’re a great one, your valleys are highlighted, as Rory McIlroy can attest.

McIlroy learned in the mid-2010s that even the great golfers are separated by their ability to achieve consistency. In those days, McIlroy doubled down on his putting work with the help of analyst Brad Faxon — and while the putter has remained a sore spot for McIlroy, it has largely served as the unlock to a half-decade-long run in contention at the majors.

Korda seems to be learning a similar lesson in 2025. Golf Channel’s Amy Rogers reported that the World No. 1 was spotted working with a mallet-style putter — different from the blade she used on Thursday — in the aftermath of her round, a sign that Korda could be looking for something different.

“I just have to work,” Korda told Rogers Thursday (she did not do a typical media availability). “I’m not hitting it well.”

It was not easy for Nelly Korda on Thursday at the Chevron Championship. Golf is that way. Life too.

“That’s just golf,” she said. “I’ve gone through waves like this before, and if I just continue working at it, hopefully it does click.”