BELLEAIR, Fla. – For the first time in over a month, Nelly Korda is back competing on the LPGA.
Korda, who missed several weeks with another neck injury, is in the 108-player field 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 occurrence of neck issues, dating to late last summer when she was sidelined 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 finish in what’s been a winless season for the former world No. 1, now No. 2.
Korda called the break mainly preventative, as she’s 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 many we travel and train, like you’re never pain-free,” Korda said. “If you go to any athlete across all sports and ask them if they’re pain-free, they’re going to tell you that they’re not. So, last year was probably, I’m not going lie, one of my worst injuries ever. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to play the rest of the year. I thought I was out for the season. And if I’m starting to feel that pain a little bit, and I know that could possibly recur, I have to prioritize my body and say that, OK, I need to step back, take some time off, and make sure I don’t go down that path.”
Korda said she didn’t touch a club for almost three weeks, instead focusing on rehab that included the use of something called the Iron Neck.
“It pretty much hooks up to a band, and you’re trying to hold the positions to strength train the muscles in your neck from all different angles,” Korda explained. “… F1 drivers use it a lot to strength train their neck.”
Korda also used her time off to introduce some new irons, switching from the TaylorMade P•7MCs to the P•7CBs in hopes of getting a little more height on her approach shots.
Still No. 10 in CME points, Korda is in no danger of failing to qualify for next week’s 60-player CME Group Tour Championship, so she has two more events to try and avoid her first winless season since 2020.
“It’s definitely been a weird year, but … I’ve had years where I haven’t won and I played great golf; then the next year I won a few,” said Korda, who then won five times in 2021; she had 15 wins between 2022 last year’s seven-win performance.
“It’s just sports. It’s golf. You can’t expect to win. You can expect to put in 100%: 100% into your body, 100% in your routine, 100% into your practice, have no distractions. That’s what I can control, and that is what I will control. But everything else is kind of out of my control.”