Nelly Korda has won for a third week in a row but more importantly for a fourth straight start on the LPGA. A record-tying fifth would have to come in a major championship, but that’s a concern for a later date.
For now, Korda is shipping home yet another trophy after her 12th career LPGA win, defeating Leona Maguire, 4 and 3, in the final of the 2024 T-Mobile Match Play at Shadow Creek Golf Course.
It’s Korda’s second straight 4-and-3 victory after opening the match-play bracket, 3 and 2.
The five-day event in Las Vegas came on the heels of wins near Phoenix and before that, Los Angeles. Her first win in 2024 was back in January. She’s the first to win four in a row since Lorena Ochoa in 2008.
“It’s just been a whirlwind,” she said of her 2024 season so far. “It’s been an amazing time, and to do it here as well in match play has been so much fun.”
Only Nancy Lopez in 1978 and Annika Sorenstam over the 2004 and 2005 seasons have won five LPGA tournaments in a row.
The match-play event started last Wednesday and the new format this year called for 54 holes of stroke play before three rounds of match play.
She hits the pin and gets the point
@NellyKorda is 5Up thru 12! pic.twitter.com/kdLbrskwuW
— LPGA (@LPGA) April 7, 2024
Korda won $300,000 for the victory and became the 25th LPGA golfer to surpass $10 million in career earnings. She also joins Ariya Juntanugan, Sei Young Kim and Hollis Stacy with 12 career victories.
“Playing the first two events, going down the stretch, there is a different type of adrenaline,” Korda said of her first two wins this year coming in a playoff. “But I feel like with match play you have that from the first hole so it was a great day playing against Leona. Always such a great competitor. Happy to get my fourth.”
The LPGA is off next week and then it’s the first women’s major of 2024 at the Chevron Championship, starting on Thursday, April 18, in The Woodlands, Texas, on the Jack Nicklaus Signature Course at The Club at Carlton Woods.