The Chevron Championship didn’t begin the way anyone saw coming for defending champion and world No. 1 Nelly Korda.
After dominating this course for the past two years, Korda was in danger of taking herself out of the first major of the year on the front nine Thursday. The old cliche says, you can’t win a tournament on Thursday, but you can lose one.
Korda was +4 through six holes on Thursday, with bogeys on four holes in a row on holes three through six. Her putter was completely off, as it has been in recent weeks and her ball striking wasn’t good enough to compensate for it. She managed a birdie on the par 5 eighth but made two more bogeys with no birdies on the back nine. She had a dreadful +5 77 and had 33 putts.
But golf is a funny game, one day you can seemingly be out of the running, the next you can look like the best player in the world. Korda made the decision to change to a mallet style putter for the second round, and it paid dividends.
It wasn’t all flawless for Korda on Friday, she actually made two early bogeys that set her back even further at +7. That is where she stood when she stepped on the 17th tee, her eighth of the day. From there, she looked like the Nelly we are used to seeing.
Korda birdied six of the last eleven holes. Her putts, for the most part, where finally falling and her approach shots looked phenomenal. The highlight of the day was hole six, her 15th of the day, where she hit a magnificent shot from a fairway bunker to near tap in range.
Now, Korda sits eight strokes back of leader Yan Liu heading into the third round. With little to lose and a lot to play for, expect to see some aggressive play from Korda as she tries to work her way back into contention.
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