There possibly could be better places for Nelly Korda to be going for a record sixth consecutive victory on the LPGA Tour. The 2024 U.S. Women’s Open in Lancaster, Pa., which drew large and enthusiastic galleries there nine years ago, figures to be rocking again. The AIG Women’s Open (Women’s British) returns to the Old Course at St. Andrews, a fantastic showplace for women’s golf, later this summer
But this week’s Cognizant Founders Cup at Upper Montclair Country Club in Clifton, N.J., where Korda will be seeking a half dozen in a row, has some things going for it as well.
Korda’s bid for history is taking place somewhere significant women’s golf history has occurred, in an event honoring the 13 golfers who had the foresight and ambition to launch the LPGA in 1950.
Her five wins in consecutive starts has Korda tied with Nancy Lopez and Annika Sorenstam for the most such victories. Lopez did in her astonishing 1978, when the hot streak was part of nine wins for the season. Sorenstam’s five consecutive trophies came over two seasons, the first in early November of 2004, the last in late March of 2005. (The ’05 LPGA schedule didn’t start until the final full week of February.)
In ’78, a victory in the Coca-Cola Classic at Forsgate Country Club in Jamesburg, N.J., was Lopez’s second of five in a row. In ’79, when the tournament moved to Upper Montclair, Lopez successfully defended her title—and who she beat was a big part of the story.
LPGA legend Mickey Wright played in the ’79 Coca-Cola, a rare competitive appearance for her after having won her 82nd and final event in 1973. Lopez, 22, and Wright, 44, were part of a five-way playoff with Hollis Stacy, Jo Ann Washam and Bonnie Bryant, still the only left-handed LPGA winner.
It became a head-to-head battle between the new star and the icon after Lopez and Wright birdied the first extra hole, Wright nearly acing the par 3 for her deuce. Both approached inside 10 feet on the next hole, but Wright, playing in tennis shoes because of foot issues, couldn’t match Lopez’s birdie. Coming a decade after her last full season on the LPGA Tour, it would be Wright’s last brush with an encore win.
It's fitting that Wright, who died in 2020 at age 85, figures in the LPGA’s history at Upper Montclair, where Korda is trying to make some of her own. When Korda won the Chevron Championship for her fifth win in as many starts, it was her fourth in a row in scheduled tournaments. No. 4 without skipping an event tied the record held by Wright, Kathy Whitworth, Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa.
Wright stands out for having had two streaks of four victories in scheduled events. She did it over a month in 1962, concluding with a Labor Day win in Spokane, Wash. And she did is again in the spring of 1963, wrapping up four straight on June 2 at the Babe Zaharias Open in Beaumont, Texas. Just how good was Wright in that 10-month span between the beginning of her first streak and the end of her second streak? She won 12 times in 21 events.
“If you said I was thinking a better game, you’d be just exactly right,” Wright said after winning the 1962 event in Spokane. “In competition these days, I don’t think much about mechanics. I think where to hit and how hard. I used to let the other kind, the ‘how’ thoughts, creep in. You can’t think like that and win consistently.”
More than 60 years later, keeping things simple seems to be a big part of Korda’s success too. “There isn’t a really a difference,” Korda’s instructor, Jamie Mulligan, recently told Golf.com’s Dylan Dethier when comparing his pupil before and during the hot run. “More simplicity in her own bubble is all. But it’s the same thing. Cleaner, more efficient. Imagine a ship. She’s been throwing stuff off the ship. Anything she didn’t need. And right now, the ship is cruising along pretty good.”
So much has changed between the time of Wright’s dominance and that of Korda and her counterpart on the PGA Tour, Scottie Scheffler, who has won four of his last five starts, the only blemish being a runner-up effort. Then and now, though, grooved talent is making the difficult look easy.
“He just seems like he’s playing on the driving range every day,” Max Homa said after Scheffler won the RBC Heritage. “It’s really amazing what he’s doing. I can’t believe how good he is week in and week out, at going through his process and just being so committed and invested in it.”
Korda admitted to feeling the heat down the stretch at the Chevron Championship, but she kept the wobbles to a minimum. If she is in contention this weekend in New Jersey, the pressure to write her own LPGA history will be great. Any sports fan should be invested in seeing how she handles the challenge.
Thanks Bill. Great memories for me with my Mom watching Mickey Wright in Spokane in ‘62 at Esmeralda Golf Club which is still going strong. Keep up the great stories.