Nelly Korda walked off the course on Thursday frustrated and went straight to the practice putting green.
A day of burned edges and a season of being on the other side of golf’s “fine line” will have that effect. Korda struck the ball well during the first round of the CME Group Tour Championship but finished the day seven shots back of opening-round leader Somi Lee.
Hitting it well and getting nothing out of her game has been the throughline of a 2025 season that has been defined by what Korda hasn’t done: win.
Korda arrived at the practice putting green to work through her frustration, but she didn’t stay long. The World No. 2 rolled the ball into the hole a few times and exited.
That was all she needed.
“I went to the putting green for five minutes and I saw some balls actually roll into the hole, which was nice,” Korda said on Friday at Tiburon Golf Club.
She arrived at the first tee on Friday morning with a lot of ground to make up. In a season defined by what she hasn’t done, Korda offered a stirring reminder that, when everything is clicking, she’s the dominant force in women’s golf.
Korda opened with back-to-back birdies and added another at the sixth before dropping a shot at the seventh. But she rebounded with three straight birdies and then closed her round by birdieing three of her final four holes to shoot a second-round, eight-under 64 and take the outright lead — a mark World No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul would eclipse an hour later en route to the 36-hole lead.
Korda hit all 14 fairways, hit 16 of 18 greens in regulation and made it around the Greg Norman-designed course in 26 putts. The burned edges that frustrated Korda on Thursday were replaced with birdie cheers from the fans in Naples.
Friday’s round was one in which all of Korda’s tweaks came together to deliver a mesmerizing display of golf.
She has been working on keeping things simple. That can be difficult after a frustrating round at the end of a frustrating season. But Korda stayed in her routine and didn’t let a Thursday of near misses get her out of sorts. Korda changed irons last week, going to the larger and more forgiving TaylorMade P7CBs in the 6-PW. Korda, who is one of the best ball-strikers in the world, was seeking more spin with her irons after a season of her approach shots not doing what she thought they would once they hit the green.
“The irons were just coming in a little steeper and softer, which I’ve been playing well this year, and I’ve been landing the ball where I want to,” Korda said on Friday. “I’ve just been seeing a little bit more release than I normally have.
“With different changes in conditions with golf courses, I mean, that’s just how it is. Last year, maybe some of the golf courses we were playing were a little softer, so I was able to stop it. This year they were more on the firmer side so they were just releasing. So was just a little bit frustrated not seeing the ball react the way I wanted it to. I really like these irons. They go through the turf really well.”
Korda has also been working on not being laid off at the top of her golf swing this year. It’s tough to get too technical while you’re also trying to lift a trophy. But the few weeks off Korda took to rest a neck ailment also allowed her to work on her swing without being concerned about numbers on a card.
That work appears to have paid off.
“I think you work on something every year,” Korda said. “That’s just kind of golf. I mean, when you play multiple weeks in a row in different types of conditions, to me, because I’m tall, when I play in a lot of wind, it starts to sway me a lot, so then I kind of revert back to old tendencies. Just always working on old tendencies, which is what’s nice about golf and also frustrating.”
“Frustrating” is a word that has showed up in Korda’s pressers a lot this season, especially during the back half as she has hunted her first win of the year. Her stats are similar to her dominant 2024 season where she won seven times, including five starts in a row. She has just been a little off here and a little off there. The tee-to-green part of her game has been top-tier. She’s second on the LPGA in Strokes Gained: Total, first off the tee and 17th in approach. Her around-the-green play has dropped off a touch from 2024 (0.42 strokes gained to 0.09) but her putting has been a tick better (0.41 in 2024 to 0.60 in 2025).
To hear Korda tell it (and tell it and tell it), the golf gods just haven’t been on her side this year. Sometimes it just isn’t your round, your tournament, your year.
“I’m very, very competitive and what I want to do on Sunday is hoist the trophy. Everyone in this field wants to do it,” Korda said at last week’s Annika. “It’s definitely been a weird year, but I can’t compare this year to last year. … It’s just sports. It’s golf. You can’t expect to win. You can expect to put in 100%: 100% into your body, 100% in your routine, 100% into your practice and have no distractions. That’s what I can control and that is what I will control. But everything else is kind of out of my control.”
Asked pre-tournament about a year in which the stats said one thing and the win column said another, Korda smiled and laughed, noting she has negative thoughts at times because she’s both human and a golfer. Those two things always go hand in hand when the bounces aren’t going your way.
But frustration and disappointment are different. Korda feels the former probably more than even she lets on. But the World No. 2 understands that in a game won and lost on razor thin margins, sometimes the smallest thing can change everything.
“It’s honestly a fine line,” Korda said on Wednesday. “It comes down to sometimes one shot. It’s like one putt lips out and you don’t get your momentum. It’s just such a fine line when it comes to golf. I’m not disappointed with the season. Obviously like I would’ve loved to raise a couple of trophies.
“I still have one more week. You never know what’s going to happen. But with golf it’s literally all about centimeters and it can go such a different way.”
A year of frustration for Korda led her to Friday at Tiburon Golf Course, where everything finally clicked, putting her in position to change the narrative and wash away a year of burned edges, near misses and unanswerable questions.
Two rounds between Nelly Korda and a different 2025 story.
This article originated on Golf.com
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