'Nelly Korda Still Has Something To Prove To Herself In 2025'

We’ve just enjoyed a spectacular year of women’s golf with Nelly Korda dominating with seven wins on the LPGA Tour, as well as a second Major title, but the game is now as global as it’s ever been. The current world’s top 10 is made up of players from nine different nations and in 2024 we had three first-time Major champions. Next year sees three new Major venues and a host of stars all looking to make their Major breakthroughs.

There is nobody better placed to run us through the year ahead than former LET player and now leading pundit Sophie Walker as we look at some of the main talking points.

Major Schedule

The 2025 Majors line up like this – the Chevron Championship (24-27 April), US Women's Open (29 May-1 June), Women's PGA Championship (19-22 June), Evian Championship (10-13 July) and the AIG Women's Open (31 July-3 August).

I like the Chevron not clashing with The Masters, now coming two weeks after Augusta so there's no type of clash and I think that's a good spot for it.

Then, in the space of two months, you have the next four Majors so, if you are able to peak at those key times, then you've cracked it. Unfortunately for Nelly Korda that coincided with her low point in 2024 – again there will be such an emphasis on playing well from the beginning of June to the beginning of August.

It certainly helps that there is no Olympics next year because that was almost like having six Majors. I like the venues and think Erin Hills is another statement course to match the magnitude of the prize fund for the US Women’s Open. We also have PGA Frisco hosting the Women’s PGA Championship.

It will be a lot easier to miss a couple of events out in 2025 and there will be the opportunity to take some time off. There is a week off before Evian now, which is good, so the bulk of the field will be able to get acclimatised properly.

So I think the schedule will help the players in order to rest and then peak at the right time. Whereas last year, obviously if you're Lydia Ko and you run hot for those few weeks, it's amazing.

Wales Breaks New Ground

For the first time Wales will host the AIG Women's Open with Lydia Ko defending her title at Royal Porthcawl.

It will be a new course for pretty much everyone. It's always good when nobody really knows it that well so I’ll enjoy seeing their eyes light up after they’ve played a practice round. The men have been to courses like Troon, St Andrews and Muirfield and then the women have followed suit so you have a good idea of what's to come. With Royal Porthcawl we've had three Senior Opens but no Open Championships. I think it will be loved in the same way that Sunningdale is held in players' affections.

It's the best course in Wales and you are right on the coast from the opening hole. I've played there a couple of times, the first was in the 2004 Home Internationals and the Daily Telegraph wrote that we were the worst England team ever!

The crowds should be great. At St Andrews this year the kids went back to school in the same week and, in Wales, the access is good from the M4. The prize pot ($9.5m) is now outstanding and we've been unlucky with the weather in this Championship so let's hope that the rain stays away and it doesn't blow too much.

A Fourth Major For Lydia Ko?

A year ago Lydia didn't even make it into the Tour Championship and then she won four times including a Major and Olympic gold. With Lydia you never quite know what you're going to get as she has these massive highs and then some lows and a lot of it will be down to her self motivation.

She's now a Hall of Famer, back in the top three in the world and winning tournaments again, but she's also married and might want to start a family. So we'll just have to wait but she's certainly earned the right to do whatever she wants.

On the course she looks very settled in what she's doing; she's had the same caddy and coach for a year now. She won two Majors as a teenager and she's just won another at 27. It’s been a long wait for the third and it wouldn’t surprise me if a fourth followed in 2025.

The talk of retirement seems to have gone quiet of late, she has mentioned about quitting at 30 like her idol Lorena Ochoa, but the world is a different place these days and it is certainly possible to have a baby and come back playing. But this is all speculation, in 2024 she had eight top 10s in 20 starts so her game is in great shape and it might well be another stellar year for the New Zealander.

SAME AGAIN FOR NELLY KORDA?

It's a strange thing to say of someone who just won seven times in a single season, and five events on the trot, but you still think that she will have something to prove to herself. She only played in 16 tournaments in 2024 and the key for next year will be to stay injury free.

The tee shot out of bounds on 16 in the third round and the double-bogey at the par-5 14th at the Old Course during the AIG Women's Open will still be a tough one to take. I saw at first hand how hard Nelly took that afterwards but she's so exceptionally good that she'll only learn from it. I don't know if she'll win another seven times but I fully expect her to win the right ones.

To watch her in person, the most impressive aspect of her game is her ball flight. She's the best 3-wood player that I've seen in the women's game. That club is really hard to pick off the fairway and she is just able to flight it so well, it's just unreal.

A little bit like Charley Hull, if the courses were set up longer and harder, she would win even more. They're always careful at Majors to not set it up that it makes the women look stupid and, at somewhere like Pebble Beach, it was too short for her. She was having to lay up off the tee and she couldn't take advantage of her biggest weapons. On the Florida courses she can get her driver out more and that really plays into her hands. When she has a longer club in her hand, she's just really impressive with her striking and consistency. It's relentless how often she does it.

The Best Player Yet To Win A Major...

This would have to be Jeeno Thitikul. She's had 31 top 10s in three years on the LPGA and seven in a row to finish this season including winning the Tour Championship.

Unfortunately she had a bad thumb injury earlier in the year and she didn't tee it up until the Chevron in April. She actually had to change the way her thumb sat on the grip in order to load the shaft at the top of her swing.

She's still only 21 but she's already been the World No. 1 and has 16 professional wins. I followed her a lot on the Ladies European Tour in 2021 when she won both the Rookie of the Year and Order of Merit and she is just the nicest, funniest person. You'll see her walking around in the shopping mall after the round and she'll be having an ice cream and she'll ask if you want some before just having a very normal chat.

Her other priceless asset is that she has a very carefree attitude to winning. At the Tour Championship the first prize is $4m but she just finished eagle-birdie and it looked like a game of golf with her friends. Speaking of friends, Ruoning Yin and Jeeno are besties, living their best life at the top of the world of golf, pulling each other up to be their best while making it look like fun not work.

Players don't have to be stern and not give anything away and, if you're not that type of person, it can take a lot of energy out of you. They're not like that and are so comfortable in themselves.

Jeeno's an unbelievable player and she can get hot like you wouldn't believe and she's not afraid to go really low. She's up there with Nelly in terms of her iron play and she just needs to just keep doing what she's doing. She would have won the stroke average this year but she didn't play enough events.

You've got five Majors in a year and she's had 31 top 10s on the LPGA in three years so one of them is going to fall soon.

One Player To Watch

Helen Briem is still only 19, has a swing speed of 111mph and she can putt too. The week after she lost a play-off on the LET, she won three LET Access Series events in three weeks in June, turned pro the following month and then also won on the main tour – all in the same year that she was playing the Portuguese Amateur Championship and winning it.

She's pretty much had three years in one, going from amateur to Access to the LET in the space of a few months. She won the Girls Amateur at Ganton by a ridiculous 12&10 in 2023 and, at 6"3, she is the tallest tour pro in the game.

Briem is already a huge talent; she hits it further than anyone on tour and she hits more greens in regulation so she's a very easy player to single out as one to watch.

One Tournament To Watch

The Women's Irish Open is a fantastic event and it falls in a really nice spot this year before the Evian Championship. There's a week off on the LPGA Tour so we might get a few players coming over to acclimatise.

It was one of the stories of the year on the LET when Annabel Dimmock came back from injury to win and the crowds were awesome. It's held at Carton House on the outskirts of Dublin and the prize money's gone up so it should be even better than 2024.

I'm hoping that these type of events set a bit of a precedence of getting the money up on the European-based LET events which will attract stronger fields and raise the overall profile of the tour.