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MUIRFIELD, Scotland — Nelly Korda was upset, and understandably. She had just roasted a tee ball on 18 — which rode the cross wind from the right edge of the fairway — and watched it bounce into a bunker on the left side. Or so she thought.  

Korda let her grievances out with a single word — “F–k” — as she slammed her driver head onto the tee box. The bunkers hadn’t been good to her Thursday, during the first round of the AIG Women’s Open Championship, and the prospect of dealing with another one, right at the end of the round, had fired her up.  

But her eyes had lied. The ball didn’t slip into one of Muirfield’s sandy hell holes, but instead skirted alongside it, rolling into the wispy first cut. No problem at all. She’d make a finishing par 15 minutes later, polishing off an exhausting, one-under 70. Five shots off the lead. 

Sometimes it takes an entire field of play to understand what makes a championship course a championship test. Other times, it takes just one player. And that was Korda on Thursday. She flighted tee shots into the wind, chipped long irons down the breeze, was dealt bad breaks and even earned some bad ones, too. Muirfield, and the challenge of Opens in general, cooked into all 70 shots. 

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Part of the brilliance of this course is its routing. You likely haven’t seen another like it. The first nine follows one big clockwise loop around the edges of the property, and the back nine, chaotically embedded within that loop, travels counter clockwise. 

“You think they all run in the same direction, but they’re just a little different,” Korda’s caddie Jason McDede said after the round. The wind is high-priority for them. He shouts out the direction one final time right before she steps into a shot. 

“Look, it’s a great golf course,” he continued. “I think it’s the best one.” 

Best course in the world? Who knows if he meant that. But at the very least he meant Best Open Host. And how great is it then, that the R&A finally brought the women’s game to what some consider … the best one! 

McDede helped escort Korda around the course in the mega-watt grouping of the top three players in the women’s game: Nelly herself, Jin Young Ko and Minjee Lee. Player and caddie agreed on a “chippy 5-iron” from 225 yards on the 17th, over the cross bunkers, funneling on the baked-out turf that McDede said is rolling “like a bowling alley.” 

Driver, 5-iron, 540+ yards, leaving her her second eagle putt of the day (she made the first one), thanks largely to a whole lot of wind. “That to me is also the course’s defense, because you really have to concentrate,” Korda said. “It’s pretty mentally draining, for sure. You have to play a round with a lot of different swings. I mean, I hit an 8-iron 190 and then I hit a 4-iron 180 today. That’s British Open. But I think it’s fun. It’s nice to do once a year or a couple times a year. I wouldn’t do it every week but it’s a lot of fun.”

“There really aren’t any pars,” added McDede. “I know that sounds weird but you’ve got an 8-iron into a par-5 and then you turn around and you’ve got a par-4 playing 600. I know it’s cliche, but you just have to take it as it comes.”

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It is cliche. But this game is built off cliches. Tee it high, let it fly. Only Korda is enjoying flighting her way around the course this week. That stinging trajectory that carves through the wind. It repeatedly made her the longest player in her group Thursday, able to hit 4-irons into 14 and 15 — the two hardest holes on the course, playing straight into the fan — while Ko and Lee both played fairway woods. “I think I hit my 4-iron the most today,” Korda said, also using it on the 1st. 

Muirfield is a gigantic thinking fest with that constant, nagging wind. And in the moments of windy doubt, like Korda’s poor approach into the 13th, its bunkers seem to jump out in the way of your ball. That 13th tee ball fell weak, short and to the right, leaving a crude lie against the back of the bunker, on a downslope no less, 15 yards from the hole. She found herself in a very similar lie just two holes later, greenside on the 15th, about the same distance. Twice, in a half hour, Korda faced that wrenching thought: can I hit this without catching the back lip and crushing my wrist? She did so each time, skillful splashes to five feet.

And you know what? She missed both par putts. Muirfield strikes again.

“I was actually impressed with myself, little pat on the back after those,” she said, literally tapping herself on the top of her shoulder, mid Q&A.

Many Open champions have made lasting memories out of the small victories.

The author welcomes your comments, concerns, and any other notes at sean.zak@golf.com.

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She looked genuinely happy, and that’s hard to knock. The woman even showed a volunteer what she had found, and that’s a good thing, too.  

But Nelly Korda needed to play that golf ball that the woman was holding in her right hand. 

“Whoaaaa,” announcer Grant Boone said on the CNBC broadcast of the sequence.

“Noooo,” analyst Sophie Walker said.  

“No, it’s not a souvenir,” Grant said. 

“Noooo” Walker repeated. 

Indeed. Though, while you’ve no doubt seen and heard of stories of fans picking up golf balls on golf courses during golf tournaments, the perpetrator here, during Sunday’s final round of the Evian Championship, looked innocent enough. When Korda hit right and into the trees with her second shot on Evian Resort Golf Club’s par-4 6th, the woman walked up to the ball, picked it up, raised it up and walked it over to the nearby volunteer. 

Who had a few words for her. 

“No, no. Oh, she’s in big trouble now.” Boone said on the broadcast. 

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Fans, of course, should probably let golf balls on golf courses at golf tournaments lie, though players can move the ball back to its original spot, penalty free, thanks to rule 9.6. That rule states: “If it is known or virtually certain that an outside influence (including another player in stroke play or another ball) lifted or moved a player’s ball: There is no penalty, and the ball must be replaced on its original spot (which if not known must be estimated) (see Rule 14.2).

This applies whether or not the player’s ball has been found.”

From there, Korda hit into a greenside bunker and took a double-bogey six. She moved into a tie for the lead at one point, but finished tied for eighth after a two-under 69.  

“Today was a little tough, especially on the back nine, but overall pretty happy with how I played,” Korda said after her round. 

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In some ways it must be a daunting task for a coach.

GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jamie Mulligan truly has one of the best track records in the game. He’s shepherded both Luke List and Patrick Cantlay‘s rises from junior golf all the way to the PGA Tour, with Cantlay winning a FedEx Cup title in 2021.

And then, in late 2021, Mulligan got a call from Jessica and Nelly Korda, two of the best swings — and players — on the LPGA Tour. How do you begin improving such an impressive slate of players? That’s the question we put to Mulligan in the latest episode of Swing Whisperers, which you can watch above.

You can learn from Mulligan’s system, too. Here are 4 ways his teaching philosophy can take strokes off your game:

1. Simpler is better

If there is one word that best describes coach Mulligan’s approach, it’s “simple.” To turn a good swing into a great one — or a bad one into a good one — he says the trick is learning to eliminate excess movement.

“If anything, their golf swings get simpler over time,” he says of the Kordas. “They make the right movements at the right time, and they do the same things over and over again.”

Being part of the Nelly Korda cover issue was so rewarding, especially because it means I now have about a thousand videos of Nelly’s golf swing on my phone.

Instruction piece of the cover story is dropping tomorrow. In the meantime, here she is silking a 9 iron 🙌 pic.twitter.com/LAmHYuqdhT

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) May 10, 2022

2. Start your swing right

Another key component of a good swing, Mulligan says, is starting your swing on the right foot. These means making sure the fundamentals of your ball position, grip, and stance are all in a place that puts your swing in a position to succeed. Most important: your posture, which will allow your body to power the rest of your swing, moving the club on the takeaway and then into the downswing.

“Her posture is beautiful,” Mulligan says of Jess Korda’s swing. “It’s what allows her body to move the club on the takeaway, and create what I call a ‘loaded takeaway.’”

3. Body guides the hands

Many teachers try to take the hands out of the swing, but Mulligan prefers to see the hands as an asset that can help you square the clubface.

“I always liked the phrase your hands are angels not devils,” he said. “But they should follow the movement of your body.”

In Mulligan’s mind, that means nailing the sequence of your transition: Shifting to your front foot, then rotating through. To help with this, he often uses a drill with his students where he puts the grip end of the club on his players’ lead hip and pushes them toward their front foot as they begin their downswing.

4. “Shots to spots”

When Mulligan talks about one of his longtime students, Patrick Cantlay, he praises above all else something that has nothing to do with his swing.

“His mentality, even as a junior golfer, was always so impressive,” he said. “He was always wise beyond his years.”

How can you adopt a similar mindset? Mulligan says to approach golf like a game of chess: When you hit your ball out of position, focus on getting safely back into position, and then continuing. It’s about limiting mistakes, and again, keeping things simple.

“It’s shots to spots,” Mulligan says. “That’s what golf is.”

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SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. — Nelly Korda is locked in. 

Like REALLY locked in. 

It’s Saturday at the U.S. Women’s Open, but it could be anywhere in the world. In this moment, there is Nelly Korda and there is the task at hand. Nothing else. 

She walks in tall, calculated strides, her shoes piercing the earth with a precision that suggests there’s an advantage to be gained from the ground beneath her. 

Suddenly, she turns and takes two more careful strides forward, reaching down and pulling out a small chunk of turf.

She rubs her thumb over her forefinger, watching emotionlessly as blades of grass fall behind her. 

The wind is whipping now on the 5th hole at Pine Needles, and it’s about time for Nelly to mount a charge.

Nelly Korda’s superstar status has, to this moment, been restrained within the borders of women’s golf. Before she was Nelly, she was the latest teenage phenom; one-half of the LPGA’s brightest sister duo; winner at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship; a World No. 1.

But at the U.S. Women’s Open, it’s clear her stardom has shifted. There are a few theories as to the catalyst — the gold medal triumph in Tokyo, the four-win 2021, the Forbes ’30 under 30′ honors — but it’s not difficult to see the reaction.

The swarm around Korda at Pine Needles on Saturday afternoon carried a decidedly different tenor than the galleries that came before (or after) it. Fans pressed against the ropes to grab a photo, screamed her name as she walked by, and followed her in galleries that looked (and sounded) an awful lot like those following the biggest stars of the men’s game.

“It was really cool,” Korda said afterward. “Honestly, super special. I don’t think I’ve ever had that big of a crowd following me at a Women’s Open or in general on a Saturday, not even being in the last pairing.”

For the game’s biggest player in its biggest event, the fan reaction was striking. It was also moving, considering that just a few months ago, she wondered the next time she’d be hearing from them at all.

It was a rainy morning in mid-March, the Friday of the Players Championship, when Korda’s arm began to swell. She called her doctor, who advised her to visit the Emergency Room as a precaution.

Not long after, Korda was diagnosed with a blood clot in her subclavian vein. Doctors advised her that she would have to undergo surgery to remove the clot, which would take her away from golf for the foreseeable future.

She rehabbed the injury for the better part of three months, slowly regaining her form at her home in Florida with the help of her swing coach, Jamie Mulligan. Finally, in late-May, she shared an Instagram announcing her return.

“See you guys @uswomensopen next week.”

Korda arrived in North Carolina with uncertain expectations. Her tempo felt good, but she hadn’t played a tournament round in more than four months. She tried her best to embrace the unknown, stamping her yardage book with “Be Proud. Be You.” and “Chin Up, You Got This!”

Once play began, though, Nelly was her regular old self — smashing drives and smoothing irons with her blissful, effortless swing. Well, except for one thing. While her notorious intensity returned, it was joined by a newfound sense of purpose.

“I’m just happy to be out here,” she said. “I’m doing what I love and I’m out here in the heat competing at the U.S. Women’s Open, and a couple months back I wasn’t sure if I was going to be doing that. So I’m just grateful.”

She played her opening two rounds at three-under, and entered Saturday at Pine Needles on the outskirts of contention.

After a birdie on the 1st, Korda began the long walk out from the clubhouse. Before long, her meticulous strides brought her to the furthest point on the property: the tee box on No. 5.

The 188-yard par-3 is beefy, and on Saturday it plays into a stiff wind. Most competitors have played a hybrid or a wood off the tee, but not Nelly. She’s stuck between two irons, and when Andrea Lee’s tee shot falls well short of the putting surface, she makes up her mind.

She picks up her club and holds a low conversation with Jason McDede, her caddie. Eventually, the two come to an agreement, and Nelly carefully places her ball on the ground. Her eyes are locked on the target as her focus lengthens.

Quietly, she steps to the ball, drawing her club back to ankle height before returning it to its place at address. Then, in one smooth slash, she finally makes contact. The ball pierces through the air, tugging slightly toward the back-left flagstick.

Her only flicker of emotion is a clubtwirl, which brings the blade back to her hip. She likes it.

Eventually, the ball returns to earth some 10 feet from the flagstick. The crowd erupts. Without breaking her stare, Nelly picks her tee from the ground and hands her club to McDede.

Nelly’s Saturday won’t end in a charge. She makes a birdie on the 5th and eventually climbs all the way to 7 under — just a few strokes off the lead — but three consecutive bogeys close her round in a whimper. She enters Sunday nine strokes back of the lead, her championship hopes sufficiently doused.

When she makes it to the scoring area, she’s still frustrated by the way her round ended. But a larger part of her is thrilled. She’s here, playing the biggest tournament in women’s golf, realizing in real time that she’s the biggest attraction her sport has had in some time.

Does Nelly Korda enjoy the challenge?

“Yeah, I definitely do,” she says, flashing a smile. “I didn’t really enjoy the challenge on my last three holes, but I do, yeah.”

Perhaps the better question is: which one?

There’s not much Korda can’t do. In just a few short years, she’s become the top-ranked golfer in the world, won a major championship, drawn the attention of millions, and become something of an international celebrity … and she’s still only 23.

If there’s been one constant in her life, it’s her ability to dismantle the words we’ve used to define her. So maybe it’s time we stop restricting ourselves to words like “woman,” and start calling Nelly Korda what she is.

Golf’s next superstar.

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SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. — At long last, the heat subsided on Friday at the U.S. Women’s Open. After days of advisories and warnings, the temperatures dipped from “scalding” to merely “hot.”

Fortunately for those at Pine Needles, the play more than made up for the difference. For the second consecutive day, the field went low.

At the halfway mark at women’s golf’s biggest event, Mina Harigae and Minjee Lee are tied for the lead at 9-under — an astonishingly low 36-hole score for a bouncy, baked-out setup at Pine Needles. Harigae and Lee make up two of a whopping 21 players under-par.

In short, there have been plenty of winners through two days of play at the U.S. Women’s Open. Below, find the five biggest.

5 winners from Friday at the U.S. Women’s Open

1. Nelly Korda shines

The former World No. 1 made her return from a blood clot to much fanfare on Thursday, but Nelly’s performance during Friday’s second round was striking. Of course, her even-keeled two-under 69 (three birdies to just a single bogey) was impressive from a statistical standpoint, but Korda fans should be particularly excited about the way she did it.

Korda looked very much her old self on Friday, powering her way around Pine Needles. Her drive on the 18th towered past those of her playing partners Danielle Kang and Atthaya Thitikul — a high, arcing draw that set up a flipped wedge look at birdie.

She escaped with only a par on the hole, but it was no matter. At 3-under through two days of play, Nelly is right where she wants to be heading into the weekend.

2. Danielle Kang grinds

Danielle Kang just snuck under the cutline on Friday at the U.S. Women’s Open after a disastrous triple-bogey 8 on No. 1, but she was a winner Friday for so much more than her leaderboard position.

Kang revealed to media after her round that doctors discovered a tumor on her spine of still-unknown nature. The tumor, Kang said, has been among the factors causing her recent string of missed starts.

She hadn’t swung a club in “eight or nine weeks” prior to just days before the USWO, undergoing “multiple procedures” to help with her back. She admitted she was still in considerable pain competing on Friday at Pine Needles, but did everything she could to keep from WDing before tournament week.

Now, she’ll play into the weekend, earn a cut of the largest purse in women’s golf history, and wear a heck of a badge of honor for her mental fortitude.

3. The amateur!

It’s been a long while since we’ve seen an amateur win a U.S. Women’s Open — 55 years, to be exact. Ingrid Lindblad, the Augusta National Women’s Amateur runner-up, enters the weekend with a legitimate shot at contention.

She enters Saturday at 6-under, three strokes back of the lead, looking to recreate the magic first captured by Catherine Lacoste in 1967.

4. The lurker

No player in the field looked more dangerous heading into Pine Needles than Jin Young Ko. Ko, a greens-in-regulation wizard, looked primed to utilize those skills to take advantage of Donald Ross’ tricky green shelves and pin placements.

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Through two rounds at the USWO, Ko has yet to have a truly memorable moment. But rather, has done what she does best: quiet, consistent dominance. She opened the week with consecutive scores in the 60s, and enters moving day in what many would consider perfect position.

5. The golf course!

Pine Needles is bouncy, firm, and decidedly demanding. Its greens are punishing, its slopes penal, and its bunkers deep. These are the conditions the USGA hoped to find Pine Needles in, and these are the conditions the best players in the world have received. Rest assured, the low scores of the opening two days are not the result of a toothless test.

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SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. — For the first time in 125 days, Nelly Korda stood in front of the media.

The No. 2-ranked player in the world is the face of women’s golf in the U.S., and her pressers are always a hot ticket. The stature of the U.S. Women’s Open — and the hordes of national media that have descended on the Carolina Sandhills as a result — only amplified the buzz.

For months, speculation brewed about her health, as a blood clot in her left arm required surgery and rehab.

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Korda strolled into the flash area behind the 18th green grandstand, agent in tow, just after 10:45 a.m. The 23-year-old has never been one to chum it up with the media, and she was equally guarded during this appearance.

“Super excited,” she said. “Feeling good. Yeah, everything is good.”

That cut-and-dry opening line set the tone for the remainder of Korda’s availability — specifically surrounding questions about the clot.

While Korda declined to reveal the cause of her blood clot, she did provide a timeline for the injury and treatment. According to Korda, she began feeling “funny” after a photoshoot in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and called her family doctor. Her physician recommended she go to the ER to get further testing.

“I listened to my body,” she said. “I went to the ER, got some ultrasounds, found out that I had a blood clot, went back home and saw a specialist.”

That specialist was Michael Leopore, a vascular specialist in the Sarasota, Fla., area.

“He was great,” she said. “Can’t think of a better doctor to do the procedure.”

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Korda underwent surgery in early April, and has “been good ever since.” She recuperated at home after surgery until she was healthy enough for travel, and then shipped off to California to rehab. While there, she worked with her coach — GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jamie Mulligan — and began working to get her game in shape for competition.

“I started obviously gradually really slow,” she said. “I probably went like 60 percent. I was hitting like my 8-iron 100 yards to see how it was feeling, and then once I got the clearance from my doctor, then I was good to go.”

Korda declined to comment on the cause of her blood clot, citing medical privacy. She did reveal that the doctors knew the cause of the clot, but she stopped short of offering the explanation to the public.

Perhaps the biggest question entering this week? We also do not know the state of Korda’s game. In her last appearance on the LPGA Tour four months ago, she finished T15. But, as every golfer knows, four months away from competition might as well be a lifetime.

“I’m not expecting too much,” she said. “I’m trying not to think about it too much, and I’m just more grateful that I’m out here.”

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Women’s golf is getting one of its biggest stars back in action.

Nelly Korda, who has been sidelined since March because of a blood clot in her left arm, is returning to competitive golf at next week’s U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles. She made the announcement on her Instagram account Friday morning with a one-sentence caption: “See you guys @uswomensopen next week.”

Korda, a seven-time LPGA winner, announced in March she was being treated for a blood clot after she noticed swelling in her arm while partaking in “a photoshoot and commercial appearance” in Florida. She went to the hospital as a precautionary measure where doctors diagnosed her condition. She missed the year’s first major at the Chevron Championship and underwent surgery in early April.

The 23-year-old has not played on the LPGA Tour since early February when she finished T15 at the LPGA Drive On Championship at Crown Colony.

Korda won four times on the LPGA Tour last season, including her first major title at the KPMG Women’s PGA, which vaulted her to No. 1 in the Rolex Golf Ranking. She also won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. She is currently ranked No. 2 in the world.

The U.S. Women’s Open is scheduled to begin June 2 at Pine Needles in Southern Pines, N.C. Yuka Saso is the defending champion.

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One of the final questions I asked Nelly and Jessica Korda during our warm-up interview was the one I’d been most curious to hear the answer to. What’s your favorite part of professional golf — your day-to-day job?

The two sisters were warming up while I lobbed questions from the side, eventually accompanied by their coach Jamie Mulligan. (The full video is below.) Jessica answered the question first.

“For me, other than obviously winning and the normal stuff that everybody would say, is meeting all the kids that come out that are inspired to come back or pick up the game of golf. I think just seeing the twinkle in their eye every time they come out and the interaction between us and them, I think that’s one of my favorite things,” she said.

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It was a terrific answer and fitting, too, given Jessica’s personality.

As for Nelly? Her answer was different in a particularly interesting way.

“I mean, [Jessica’s answer] is one of the reasons,” she said. “But for me it’s the moments you’re coming down the stretch and you’re in contention and you feel the rush through your entire body. It’s those moments that I love and the intensity, too. Afterwards you feel really sick because you’re like, oh my God, I just went through a million emotions in the past four hours, but it’s what I love. I strive to be in that position as many times as possible and it’s what I work for.”

If you’ve watched her in contention down the stretch, it’s clear Nelly is locked in — but it’s almost impossible to tell what she’s thinking. So I found it fascinating that those inscrutable moments are her very favorite. But Nelly thought for a moment and then interjected with an important sidenote.

“I have to add, I’m caught between the lows and highs,” she said. “Because I appreciate the lows so much because I enjoy grinding on something. So it may feel really bad to lose in a playoff but it’s also extra motivation that I don’t enjoy — but I maybe feed off it.”

Coaches talk all the time about wanting their players to fall in love with the process of getting better, rather than focusing merely on results. They also work with their players on staying present down the stretch and enjoying the feeling of being in the mix. Nelly Korda? She already loves both. That, coupled with a tremendous golf swing, seems like it could have something to do with her ascent to No. 1 in the world.

You can watch the entire “Warming Up” video below.

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A few of my coworkers and I spent a day with Nelly and Jessica Korda last month for the May issue of GOLF Magazine. We spent an overcast afternoon at The Yards, in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., gathering video and instruction content, cover images and information for this month’s cover story.

We also invited our Instagram followers to send in some questions for Nelly to answer. For the most part, she was an open book, but she demurred on the most common question we got: What are your goals for this year?

“I don’t share my goals,” she said sternly but with a smile on her face.

I found this interesting. It’s such a common question for players, and I’d never heard someone not give an answer. I’ve asked a handful of male pros about their goals, and their answers seem to be pretty similar: win a major, make the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup team and climb up the Official World Golf Ranking. Justin Thomas even shares a list of his (very specific) goals at the end of every season.

I stood there with Nelly while scrolling through a long list of questions we had solicited for her. More than half were, “What are your goals for this season?” We laughed, and Nelly said “none of your business!” She prefers to work toward her goals in silence.

Luckily for us, we still got to learn a bit about Korda through this brief Q&A.

What’s your favorite meal?

“Sushi, any Mediterranean food, Greek food. I don’t really eat pizza too much but that’s probably a cheat food for me that I really like.”

What part of your sister Jess’ game would you want to have?

“Her putting. It’s so good.”

This made me curious as to which part of Nelly’s game Jess would want to have, so we asked her as well.

What part of Nelly’s game would you [Jess] want to have?

“There’s actually two parts of her game that I would really want. One, she drives the ball super straight and two, her short game is probably the best I’ve seen.”

OK, back to Nelly.

What is your favorite childhood golf memory with Jess?

“We used to play Future Collegians World Tour events back in the day and she won her division and and I won my division and that was the first time we won the same event.”

How do you keep your focus after a bad hole?

“I’ve always just said to myself that there’s more golf to be played and by taking it one shot at a time.”

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Go behind the scenes with Nelly and Jessica Korda as they go through their warm-up routine with coach Jamie Mulligan and answer questions from GOLF’s Dylan Dethier.

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