Nelly Korda regains Rolex Rankings No. 1 spot with her 2024 Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship victory
Nelly Korda is one of the best golfers in the world, and her victory at the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship cemented that fact. It returned her to the Rolex Women's World Rankings top spot, a spot she's held at various points throughout her career.
This is, however, the first time that the golfer has been ranked this high since August 2023. It’s the sixth time in total that she has claimed this spot above all her peers. All in all, she has spent 38 weeks at this ranking, and will now begin spending some more starting this week.
The victory, which required an intense playoff after four rounds were completed, was the 10th of her young career on the LPGA Tour. Aside from a return to the top, it also marked a major milestone. Only 39 American golfers have 10 or more LPGA wins, and Korda is now one of them.
Two of those wins have come in the 2024 season. Both of them, somehow, required a playoff. She topped fellow top golfer Lydia Ko at the LPGA Drive On Championship in January. It's the third year she's had multiple wins on tour in her career, a timeline that spans back to 2017.
Nelly Korda survived chaotic finale to win Seri Pak
The fourth round of the Seri Pak Championship was rather chaotic. Korda herself went up and down the leaderboard at breakneck pace as golfers turned in solid hole after solid hole. At the end, Ryann O'Toole had tied her at nine under and the two had to shoot one hole to determine the winner.
Nelly Korda said via Golf.com:
“I say this all the time, but I seem to always make it interesting. Yeah, just doing normal Nelly things, making it interesting.”
She was two shots shy of the lead at the beginning of the round, before her ascents and descents even began. Korda continued:
“Honestly didn’t really start feeling nervous until I made that eagle putt. I didn’t really know what was going on, how the group behind me was doing. It was so windy was caught up in trying to control my ball flight. I got maybe a little nervous where it kind of got a little ahead of myself and started making some mistakes of yeah, interesting last couple holes.”
At the start of the playoff, she was frustrated with herself and her coach had to calm her down, asking her if she was ready to stop venting and to be positive about the situation. That little chat they had proved to be enough, as she and O'Toole both struggled off the tee on the hole before Korda birdied from 15 feet.
Just before that, O'Toole had barely missed from the same distance, providing an action-packed end to a historic weekend for Nelly Korda.