LPGA Tour Golf

Nelly Korda kisses the trophy while posing for photos after winning the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Sunday, April 21, 2024, at The Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Texas.

 David J. Phillip, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The 2015 U.S. Women’s Open had elements that will be difficult to match: record crowds, a dramatic final round featuring a brilliant performance by the champion, and all the hoopla surrounding the biggest sports event ever held in Lancaster County.

The 2024 U.S. Women’s Open will counter with a megastar: a Goliath (in impact, if not personality), women’s golf’s Scottie Scheffler, or its next Annika Sorenstam or even, perhaps, its Caitlin Clark.

Nelly Korda won’t have to audition for the lead role when women’s golf’s biggest event tees off May 28-June 2 at Lancaster Country Club. She’s earned it.

Korda isn’t just the sport’s best player. She is, at 25, fully healthy, headed to her prime and on a roll that doesn’t happen often in the cruelest, least solvable game. She has won the last five tournaments she’s played in.

Scheffler, the top gun in the men’s game, was asked last month after winning his second straight event, including the Masters: “Is this turning into a competition between you and Nelly?”

“I was like, ‘I don’t know, man, I think if it’s a competition, she’s got me pretty beat right now,’ ” he later said.

Korda’s No. 5 was a major championship, the Chevron, two weeks ago. That hasn’t happened before. No. 6, if it happens, will be a record.

She isn’t just the world’s No. 1 player. She’s further ahead in world ranking points of second-ranked Lilia Vu than No. 2 is of No. 30. Her average ranking points per event are more than double Vu’s.

She’s made $2,424,216 on tour this year. In second place is Maja Stark, with $815,380.

READ: 79th US Women's Open nears at Lancaster Country Club [photos, video]

‘It’s amazing to watch her’

“She’s already made history,” Annika Sorenstam, one of three other women to win five straight LPGA Tour events and, arguably, the best player in the sport’s history, told the Golf Channel after the Chevron.

“It’s amazing to watch her. To win five in a row and make a major her fifth, it’s a really, really hard thing to do.”

Michelle Wie was probably a bigger celebrity than Korda last time this show was in town, and had won the 2014 USWO. Wie, now retired, played through injuries to finish 11th at Lancaster and was treated royally by the crowds here. But her career arc was waning, and she never had a stretch like the one Korda’s on.

In a news conference before the Chevron, Stacy Lewis, a former world No. 1, said Korda could be selling her celebrity harder.

“Her playing great golf, that’s what pushes us more forward than anything,” Lewis said.

“Every week, she needs to be in here (with the media) talking about it and talking about how good she’s playing, and I don’t know what that’s going to be, what that looks like for her.”

Women’s sports on the rise

It comes at a time when women’s sports are having a moment.

Women’s college basketball, fueled by the star power and spectacular talent of Clark, outdid the men’s college game in TV ratings for last month’s semifinals and finals of their respective NCAA tournaments.

The women’s championship game, Clark and Iowa vs. South Carolina, was the most-watched basketball game since 2019, men or women, college or pro.

A week later, tickets to attend the WNBA draft, held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, sold out in 15 minutes.

Clark takes her act to the WNBA during the same summer when women like gymnast Simone Biles and swimmer Katie Ledecky will be among the biggest stars of the Paris Olympics.

Clark could be part of an American women’s basketball team going for its eighth straight gold medal. Korda, by the way, won an Olympic gold medal at 2020 Games in Tokyo.

The LPGA isn’t getting basketball numbers, but people are watching. Golf Digest reported last month that Sunday ratings for the 2023 USWO, played at venerable Pebble Beach in California, peaked at 2.2 million and averaged 1.58 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, the highest viewership for women’s golf since Wie’s 2014 victory at Pinehurst.

NBC and Peacock again will broadcast the Open along with Golf Channel, which will originate its “Live From …” studio show from Lancaster Country Club during Open week.

The LPGA’s TV rights deal is locked in through 2030, although the Open broadcast is part of a separate deal between NBC and the United States Golf Association.

The tour’s overall purse has jumped from $85.7 million to $123.25 million from last year to this. The Open’s $12 million purse will be the biggest in women’s golf history.

“It’s unbelievable to think, when I drove into my first U.S. Women’s Open, which was at Oakmont in 2010, they’re playing for $3.25 million,” Mike Whan, CEO of the United States Golf Association, said Tuesday at media day for this year’s event.

“When they drive down this (LCC) driveway, and they actually will drive down this driveway, realize that that whole pool house is theirs for the week — sorry to your members, but we’re sort of taken over the pool house for a week — they’re going to be playing for a $12 million purse.”

Which brings us back to Lancaster and to Korda, who will try to win her first Open. Her best finish in the event was eighth in 2022. In nine tries, she’s finished 39th or worse seven times, including two missed cuts and a tie for 64th last year.

Her record in the majors, in fact, is less impressive than her week-to-week level. She’s won two. One of them, the Chevron Championship, was two weeks ago, the fifth of her five-straight streak.

She withdrew from last week’s JM Eagle LA Championship, citing exhaustion, and has now been low-profile for a week-and-a-half.

When she pulls into Lancaster, low-profile won’t be an option.

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