Nelly Korda is heading into the CME Group Tour Championship without a single win in the 2025 season.
Korda won seven tournaments in 2024, including the Chevron Championship and The ANNIKA, and was expected to dominate again this year.
Most would presume that her golf game must have regressed, but she has actually played at a similar level to last season.
Fellow LPGA star Lydia Ko has now explained why Korda’s winless run is proof that golf can be so unpredictable.
Lydia Ko makes a point about Nelly Korda and the difficulty of winning golf tournaments
There are no guarantees in sport, not least golf, so you can never expect to win tournaments, even when you’re playing well.
On that note, Korda recently said that her statistics are actually better this season than last, despite failing to add to her trophy collection.
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Ko believes that Korda’s 2025 season is a stark reminder that you need several things to go your way to win an event.
“The level of play between the number one-ranked player on the CME rankings to 100… I think the talent is not that far different,” she concluded.
“Obviously, there is a bit of luck, how you’re feeling health-wise. There are just a lot of variables to that. So the depth of talent is just so much stronger than before, so it is that much more difficult to win.
“Golf is that crazy game where… I saw Nelly’s press conference. She has better stats than last year, but she hasn’t won and won seven, eight times last year. Sometimes stats aren’t it. If you did that, you would think you would win X amount of times.
“There are so many variables, and you’re playing against 143 other players. It’s just a lot of things.”
Lydia Ko says whether the LPGA Tour needs more stars like Nelly Korda
Ko also spoke about the future of the LPGA ahead of the Tour Championship first round on Thursday.
Specifically, a reporter asked whether the LPGA needs more superstars like Nelly Korda to grow the game.
Ko admitted that Korda’s marketability is significant, but the LPGA prides itself on being competitive from top to bottom.
“I think it’s both ways,” she said. “As a tour and even from a fan perspective, yes, it’s great to have somebody like Nelly who was so dominant last year.
“Catches a lot of attention, especially with her… in Nelly’s case, being an American player. That catches a lot of different attention. In the case of even if you don’t play golf, you know who Tiger Woods is.
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Ko continued: “But I think, as a Tour, having better talent and more talent throughout the leaderboard is just as important as having one superstar.
“We market ourselves to be a very global tour, and I think that’s what we see, especially having 12 first-time winners this year, a bunch last year, and the year before. So I think that just shows rookies aren’t really rookies. They’re very good, and it’s really hard to count anybody out.
“So it is a double-edged sword in that sense, that you want the depth and the talent because you just want to see the whole game grow, but at the same time, if I were to market someone, it’s much easier to market one person than 30 people.”
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