Nelly Korda’s latest action would make her very happy

What a year for Nelly Korda, who has climbed to the highest point in golf and also experienced the lowest point. The word roller-coaster seems to fit, given the way he went up, up and up, followed by a dip down, down and down. Because now, if you’ve been waiting for another reminder of his reign, it’s here – albeit in a slightly different way than the previous one this year.

Korda was named the Rolex Player of the Year on Monday, which is a statistical system that is ultimately based on a majority vote from his peers. But what it tells you right now is not so much that his season was the best season, but that it was unquestionably dominant. He has done more in just 14 events than any other major player has done in 20.

In recent months you could have punched holes in Korda’s 2024 CV and fought for someone else instead. Lydia Ko won the biggest events – the Olympics and the AIG Women’s Open – and earned her place in the LPGA Hall of Fame as a result. Jeeno Thitikul has a slight edge over Korda in batting average and Strokes Gained. Korda is the only player to earn more than $3 million this year, but others will join him in the next few weeks.

That’s all good for an LPGA product – some balance in the face of one’s power – but the statistics and timing of events tend to forget that Korda has only played 14 tournaments this year. And in those 14 weeks, he won about half the time. And with three tournaments left, it doesn’t matter if Lydia Ko or Ayaka Furue shoot 30 under every time they combine. They won’t accumulate enough points to steal the LPGA’s year-end honors.

Unlike the PGA Tour or dozens of other sports leagues that choose a Player of the Year or MVP, the LPGA awards points for specific achievements during a given season. Whoever finishes with the most points at the end of the year is POY. It’s the best system imaginable, that ignores a player’s relationship with the media or their peers, and simply promotes the player who has checked the most boxes many times.

Over the course of the season, players earn POY Points for every top ten finish they have, first place gets 30 points and second place gets 12, all the way down to one point for a 10th place finish. That number has doubled over the course of five major championships. And in most seasons, the POY race comes down to the finish line, with the winner usually accumulating 160 to 240 points at the end of the season.

Korda has been sitting on a larger winning streak for more than two months now, and he usually hasn’t needed to play more golf to shore up his form. Korda scored 180 points in six wins from January to May alone, which would have been good enough to earn him the POY award in 2022 and 2017. Add to his three top 10s and he’s built up 244 POY points while out in the United States. .

That last part is a context that will soon be forgotten. But it’s part of what makes this season so impressive. Korda notably did not play any events in Asia this year, a longtime staple of the LPGA program. He has been struggling with a neck injury in recent weeks, which kept him from returning home, and he moved to Asia earlier this year, again – in favor of family and training time in the Czech Republic.

While some of his peers endured another rough season of travel, Korda played in just three tournaments from late May to late July in part due to a dog injury. That stretch included three missed cuts (two of which came in majors), before she righted her ship with a runner-up finish at the Women’s Open in St. Louis. Andrews.

Both Ariya Jutanugarn and Jin Young Ko won the award earlier in recent years, but did so while playing 26 and 21 events, respectively. Korda did it in just 14. He will make two more this month in Florida, bringing his total to 16. 16 truly outstanding, better than anyone else, no matter what happens between now and Thanksgiving, to cap off a winning season. you quickly forget.