Nelly Korda Puts LPGA on Notice with 2026 Chevron Championship Win

Nelly Korda won her third major championship with a dominant performance at the Chevron Championship at Memorial Park, leading wire-to-wire and finishing at 18 under, five strokes ahead of Ruoning Yin and Patty Tavatanakit. After going winless in 2025, Korda now has two wins in 2026 and hasn’t finished worse than second in five starts. She also regained the No. 1 ranking in the world. In our latest Alt Shot, Fried Egg Golf’s Kevin Van Valkenburg and Matthew Galloway discuss what this means for Korda and the sport. ‍

Kevin: I watched a lot of the Chevron, and I think my biggest takeaway was just how steely-eyed and focused Nelly was this week. Obviously you need to be super focused to win a major championship, but it felt like she was working on another level, perhaps unlocking a dominance we haven’t seen before. Multiple times in interviews after winning, she brought up that she wanted to prove you could still win a major championship even if you missed a few short putts and had a few miscues. It felt like an odd thing to emphasize, but not if you’ve followed her history. Sure, Korda has three majors, and she’s the first American to win a third major since Meg Mallon in 2000. But she’s also let a couple slip away with some mental lapses, particularly with her putter. That may be a narrative of the past. Even on Saturday when Korda didn’t have a great feel with her putter — she kept missing everything to the right — she didn’t let it weigh on her mentally. She kept hitting beautiful drives and towering iron shots, hitting the correct side of the green and rarely putting much stress on her short game. You can make a real case this is the most disciplined she’s ever looked in a major. She didn’t miss a fairway until the 18th on Sunday, and hit 82 percent of her greens all week. I think my other takeaway is Memorial Park might be set up for Korda to win four or five of these going forward. It’s hard to imagine a better venue for her, a course with five par 5s (all of them reachable for her). Are we about to see Korda have a run like 2024 where she rips off five or six wins?

Matthew: There have been a lot of stats dolled out from Nelly’s dominant Chevron win, but the one that stands out the most to me is that only two other players have started an LPGA season with five consecutive finishes of T-2 or better:  Karrie Webb in 2000 (five) and Annika Sorenstam in 2001 (six). Both Karrie and Annika went on to win seven times in those years, and one of those victories for Karrie was the U.S. Women’s Open. Golf media is prone to hyperbole after big wins, but from what I saw from Nelly this week in Houston, I don't think we’d be mistaken to expect another massive season from her. The chink in Nelly’s armor has been her putting, and she has put in some hard work with a new putting coach, David Angelotti. Nelly changed her grip, and it held up over the weekend when she had to play with a massive lead, which she considered “one of the hardest things I've had to do mentally.” I’m looking forward to seeing what Nelly can do this year after such a stellar start to the season. At the moment, she is clearly the best player in the world.

Kevin: It was interesting to hear Nelly say afterward that she had to learn the power of letting go, that she was overanalyzing things too much in 2025. I think the truest thing you can say about her is that she loves to compete, that she really burns with the desire to win, and she doesn’t care much about all the ancillary stuff. She’s a bit like Scottie Scheffler that way. Whatever pressure we put on her to be great, it really isn’t much greater than the pressure she’s put on herself, and that’s why she has a chance to be one of the all-time greats. I’m excited she’s found a little bit of zen in that process. And I have to say: I enjoyed the leap into the temporary pool! I didn’t think I would, but it was fun to see her cannonball again. It was annoying that I had to hunt it down on Peacock, switching back just to watch it, but that’s golf these days, chasing the broadcast around like it’s an unleashed puppy. It seemed like the only person who didn’t enjoy it was her nephew, Greyson, who appeared livid he wasn’t informed of the plan ahead of time. What did you make of the much-debated pool (or was it a pond?) and the silliness surrounding it?

Matthew: There's a good parallel in the fact that Nelly’s cannonball into the pool was nearly as perfect as her golf swing. More on the pool in a second. Her desire to compete makes for a quick comparison to Scottie, but when I see Nelly’s near-perfect golf swing, rhythm, and flow in how she plays the game around the greens, I see more of Rory McIlroy. She handled the expectations of what the game had placed upon her last year after a record season, and she has seemingly grown from falling short of those lofty demands. She leaned on her team and improved where she was struggling, which should be scary for the rest of the LPGA. Now for the pool. We all piled on the sideshow it became, and yes, the leap ending up on Peacock was a chef’s kiss for NBC’s overall coverage, but I’m inclined to side with KVV here. The pool wasn't the worst! That said, instead of trying to force a tradition to continue, maybe the championship should instead focus on making sure you can watch the leader play all 18 holes on Sunday.

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