BELLEAIR, Fla. – For the first time in more than a month, Nelly Korda is back competing on the LPGA.
Korda, who missed several weeks with another neck injury, is among 108 players for this week’s penultimate event of the LPGA season, The Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican Golf Club.
For Korda, this is at least the third appearance of neck problems, dating back to late last summer, when she was out for eight weeks. She hasn’t competed since the Lotte Championship in early October in Hawaii, where she tied for fourth, her eighth top 10 in what has been a winless season for the former world No. 1, now No. 2.
Korda called the break preventative, as she is more in tune with her body after dealing with a blood clot in March 2022; she said she experienced symptoms for three weeks before seeing a doctor, who discovered the clot in her right arm.
“The thing with injuries and how much we travel and train, like we’re never pain free,” Korda said. “If you go to any athlete in any sport and ask them if they don’t feel pain, they’ll tell you they don’t. So last year was probably, I’m not going to lie, one of my worst injuries. body and say that, OK, I need to step back, take some time off and make sure I don’t go down this path.
Korda said she didn’t touch a club for nearly three weeks, instead focusing on rehabilitation that included using something called an Iron Neck.
“It hangs in a band and you try to hold the positions to train your neck muscles from all angles,” Korda explained. “…F1 drivers use it a lot to train their necks.”
Korda also used his free time to introduce new irons, switching from the TaylorMade P•7MC to the P•7CB in hopes of getting a little more height on his approach shots.
Sorenstam played nine holes with Trump on Monday at Pelican Golf Club, where the 18-year-old will compete as a sponsor invite, and couldn’t help but think about her controversial PGA Tour invitation decades ago.
Still No. 10 in CME points, Korda is in no danger of not qualifying for next week’s 60-man CME Group Tour Championship, so she has two more events to try to avoid her first winless season since 2020.
“It’s definitely been a weird year, but…I had years where I didn’t win and I played great golf; then the next year I won a few,” said Korda, who went on to win five times in 2021; she has 15 wins between 2022 and last year’s seven-win performance.
“It’s just sport. It’s golf. You can’t expect to win. You can expect to put 100 percent into it: 100 percent into your body, 100 percent into your routine, 100 percent into your training, with no distractions. That’s what I can control, and that’s what I will control. But everything else is kind of out of my control.”
