Nelly Korda won’t let claustrophobic fairways or two missed cuts in a row keep her from going full-throttle at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
The World No. 1 said her strategy for this week’s major championship at Sahalee Country Club is to get the driver in her hands as often as possible.
“Still going to be aggressive,” Korda told reporters Tuesday in Sammamish, Wash. “There’s a couple holes where I can’t hit driver, but majority of the round I will be hitting driver just because you don’t want a longer club into these greens. Yes, the tee shots are pretty intimidating, but the greens, the second shot in is pretty tough as well.
“So overall, I mean, if you have the length you may as well — you have to hit it. This is the type of golf course where you just got to sack up and hit your driver.”
The course is a “completely different” test in Korda’s eyes than Lancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania, host of last month’s U.S. Women’s Open. While the turf at Lancaster was undulated, she found the tee shots less intimidating than Sahalee’s.
“If you hit it a little off line here off the tee, you have a bunch of trees in your way so you’re pitching out the majority of the time,” she said. “… I’m just trying to make a game plan for this week, and every week is just a refresh.”
Korda hopes that refresh will lead to improved results after surprise dip in her form. She won five straight LPGA starts and six of seven earlier this season, a run rivaling that of men’s World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.
Then came a shocking 10-over 80 in the first round of the U.S. Women’s Open, where she was done in by a septuple-bogey 10 on a par-3 hole. After that cut, she couldn’t recover from an opening 76 at last week’s Meijer LPGA Classic and missed her second straight weekend.
Korda insisted she isn’t dwelling on the negatives.
“I did have a good round on Friday and I drove it really well, so trying to take the positives from that,” she said.
“But that’s golf. I mean, I’m going to go through these situations so many times where I feel like I’m playing really well and I’ll go through a little lull where golf is the hardest thing in my life right now. So that’s I feel like what grows myself as a person and what makes me appreciate the sport so much and makes me appreciate the wins and the highs and good shots, the crowds out there as well.”
–Field Level Media
