Nelly Korda ties LPGA record with fifth straight win while clinching second career major championship

Nelly Korda made golf history on Sunday, winning her fifth consecutive LPGA event while also securing the second major of her career. Korda won the 2024 Chevron Championship by two shots over Maja Stark and three shots over Natalie Coughlin and Brooke Henderson, continuing her incredible undefeated streak that dates back to mid-January.

While Scottie Scheffler has been making headlines for his incredible level of play on the men’s side, Korda is doing better on the women’s side. Scheffler has won three of the last four events he has played and is looking to win four of five on Sunday at the 2024 RBC Heritage.

In capturing her fifth consecutive victory, Korda now stands alongside Nancy Lopez (1978) and Annika Sorenstam (2004-05) as the only female golfers to accomplish such a feat on the LPGA Tour. She will have the opportunity to break the mark in her next event, which could be at next week’s LA Championship.

Korda led the first women’s championship of the year for most of a weekend that was suspended amid inclement weather in Woodlands, Texas, outside Houston. She shot 68-69-69 in the first three rounds and seemed to absorb a different player’s run at the top of the leaderboard each day. Sunday’s run came from Stark, who birdied his final two holes to get to 11 under and apply some pressure on Korda.

It was not easy. Korda hit his tee shot on the 15th into the water before escaping with bogey as his lead went from four to three. That’s the advantage of building four-shot courses at the start of a weekend; gives room to make some mistakes in the final stretch. With Stark ahead on his birdies, Korda nearly pinned the 17th and then made a final birdie on the 18th to secure the victory.

“I can finally breathe now,” she told NBC. “That back nine felt like the longest back nine of my entire life. It was a little tough on defense, but happy to get the win.”

“I was definitely starting to feel it on the last nine holes,” she added, having made more bogeys on the last nine holes than on the previous 27 holes combined. “The nerves are building. It’s a big deal. It’s all I ever wanted when I was a little girl – to lift that important trophy. Like I said, I can finally breathe now and enjoy the moment because I was definitely very nervous. I feel sick to my stomach .”

Korda won her first major since the 2021 Women’s PGA Championship. Since then, she has had four top 10s but no wins.

It’s been an extraordinary 2024 for the world’s No. 1 player, who has basically racked up career-worthy achievements in recent months. On Sunday, she took home the Chevron Championship’s top prize, a purse that increased 50 percent from last year to $7.9 million for the field.

“There’s a key to the simplicity I feel when I play,” she said. “Honestly, I take it one shot at a time and we pick a game plan when we get to the golf course and work and stay in our little bubble. It’s been working so far. I feel like golf can get too complicated, and there’s a key to simplicity of it.”

Rick Gehman, Kyle Porter, Patrick McDonald and Greg DuCharme discuss Scottie Scheffler’s dominance at the RBC Heritage, Nelly Korda’s fifth consecutive victory, and Miles Russell’s top 25 finish at age 15. Follow and listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts It is Spotify.