LANCASTER, Pa.—Nelly Korda has been busy.
The 25 year-old is in the midst of one of the most dominant runs in LPGA Tour history, winning six of her last seven starts and is the favorite heading into the U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster C.C.
In the midst of this run, she also hosted her own AJGA Invitational. 66 female junior players descended upon the course Korda plays in Florida, Concession Golf Club. Korda was there to meet and talk with the players.
“I feel like just yesterday I was playing AJGAs, playing in The Annika Invitational,” Korda said. “Having her out and seeing someone who has done so much for the game was very inspirational.”
Korda had the same effect on the players in her tournament.
Michael Reaves
“She was so sweet,” Lucy Cook of Mississippi said of talking to Korda. “She cared about the players there. She wanted to know about you, just like you wanted to know about her.”
Korda’s current play is inspiring the next great golfers. What do they see when they watch her? Cook and two other competitors from the tournament shared what they see in Korda’s game that they try to incorporate into their own.
1. Stay present and balanced
When Scarlett Schremmer of Hawaii picked up the game, Korda was coming onto the scene on the LPGA Tour. Schremmer and her mom studied Korda’s swing, printing out photos, trying to recreate it for Schremmer.
“All of my golf swing, I feel like has been modeled after her swing,” Schremmer said.Beyond the golf swing, though, Schremmer takes notes from Korda’s behavior.
“I think she does a really good job of staying in the present moment,” Schremmer said. “She really preaches how she does a good job just taking it one shot at a time. And that's something that I've appreciated for a long time.
It's so easy to get ahead of yourself, especially because golf can be a slow game, and I just think it's nice to see kind of that graceful attitude on the golf course where it's not really overly positive and it never looks negative either. It's just really balanced.”
Schremmer sees this balanced mentality off the golf course, too.
“She's very grounded and humble, it seems like even though the golf world has revolved around her for the last few weeks,” Schremmer said. “So it was cool to see that and just how personable she is despite all the great things that have fallen into place for her lately.”
2. Find a way to practice (no matter what’s going on around you)
“The world number one doesn’t take a day off,” Lucy Cook of Mississippi said after watching Korda move through her days at Concession.
“I looked down the driving range and saw her with all the people that help her around her and then you see all the media people and you see that it's still not really phasing her, it doesn't bother her. She's just doing her practice just like all of us were,” Cook said. “She's still finding a way to practice.”
Sarah Stier
Regardless of how busy a day is, or what distractions you may find at the course, there is always a way to work on your game. Cook saw Korda’s self discipline and made a note to emulate it.
3. Tempo, tempo, tempo
“Her swing is perfection to me,” Yu Bai of California said. “Whenever I feel like I'm having a bad swing day, I just visualize her swing. I'm like, Swing it like Nelly.”
When Bai pictures Korda’s swing to try to get her own back on track, she sees the rhythm in her mind.
“I feel like it's just her tempo in general. She just gets to the top and her swing is fast without being quick, and her finish is really smooth and it's just really smooth all the way through. It's like she knows exactly where she's going to hit it every time,” Bai said.
4. Don’t let one bad hole define the round
“She is so zoned in and even if she has one bad hole, she's not going to want to get the best of her. I know I didn't play well the first day, but I let two holes get to me on the last six holes on the first day and they kind of cost me,” Cook said.
Looking back at how the one bad hole turned into several bad holes, she realizes that a mistake like that is something Korda avoids.“If she made a triple – I don’t know when the last time she made a triple – but if she did, she wouldn’t let it get to her,” Cook said.
“She wouldn't go triple, then another bogey, then three putt. She just slows herself down. You can't just let one hole sit there and eat you up inside.”