TOKYO — Without their parents, without their friends, without any spectators, the Korda sisters, Jessica and Nelly, arrived at the Olympic Games to begin play in the women’s golf tournament that begins Wednesday.
They were asked who they do have supporting them here this week.
“Each other,” Jessica said.
It was the perfect answer. The daughters of 1998 Australian Open men’s tennis champion Petr Korda and 1988 Czech Olympic tennis player Regina Rajchrtova Korda, Jessica, 28, and Nelly, 23, are two of the four U.S. golfers representing the United States in the women’s Olympic competition. Lexi Thompson and Danielle Kang are the others.
So far, it has been a stellar week for the Americans in golf, with Xander Schauffele winning the gold in the men’s event Sunday.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” said Jessica, who joined the LPGA Tour in 2011 and has six professional wins. “We walked around the Olympic Village a couple of days ago when we got here. What an experience that was. We watched the guys battle it out for bronze, just seeing what it means. What an exciting time to be able to play, sad obviously we can’t have fans out and really get the experience we are looking forward to but we’re still extremely grateful to be here.”
Jessica lives in Jupiter, Fla., and knows and practices with a few PGA Tour players, including Justin Thomas. When he arrived at the Games for the men’s competition, her texts started coming.
“I was grilling him when he first landed here: how is it, what’s everything like, I need to know details,” she said.
Nelly Korda (USA) watches on the eighteenth hole as she attends the final round of the men’s individual stroke play of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Summer Games at Kasumigaseki Country Club. Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Now that he is finished competing and no longer here, he is returning the favor.
“He texted me this morning: ‘I’m dying to know what you think about the golf course.’ ”
Nelly, who joined the LPGA Tour in 2017 and won her first major, the Women’s PGA Championship, in June, said she was already into Olympic pin trading.
“I’m already kind of decked out,” she said, showing off the pins she had attached to her Olympic credential lanyard at a Monday press conference. “China has a really cool one with a panda on it.”
The sisters are far enough apart in age to never have been competitive growing up. Their rivalry began, Jessica said, “when Nelly came out on tour.”
They did have putting matches before Nelly turned pro.
“She would get mad at me because I would pick the most ridiculous putts,” Nelly said. “She was like, this is not practical.”
Said Jessica: “She’d pick putts across the entire green.”
But whatever rivalry they have pales in comparison to the bond they have as sisters traveling the world playing golf. (Their younger brother Sebastian, 21, is a professional tennis player who reached the fourth round of Wimbledon this year.)
“I don’t know what I would do without Jess,” Nelly said. “We had a conversation a couple days ago, ‘So you’re going to be playing til the end of my career too, right? You’re going to be out here as long as me? You’re not going to leave me, right?’”
Jessica didn’t necessarily answer those questions, but she did say Nelly has had a massive impact on her game.
“Not that it saved my career (when Nelly joined the tour) but I definitely think it refreshed it,” Jessica said. “It’s really lonely and it’s really hard to be out here. I did a lot of it myself. My younger brother and sister were growing up and it’s not like our parents could come out every week and travel with me.
“It gets to be a lot. You forget what normal life is like. That balance kind of just blurs a little bit. Just having her come out on tour, it really refreshed a lot of the love of the game and the love for the tour and wanting to be out here and doing this with her.”
Their only regret this week is that there will be no galleries supporting the top players in the world.
“With just how big women’s golf is here, I keep saying that it’s such a shame that we can’t have fans here,” Jessica said. “This would have been huge in Japan.”