Xander Schauffele and Nelly Korda enter Paris as reigning gold medalists.
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THE NIGHT THAT NELLY KORDA reclaimed the title of World No. 1, she celebrated in unlikely, unglamorous vogue: with a drive throughout the desert. Korda had simply gained the Seri Pak Championship in L.A. however had beforehand agreed to road-trip to the next week’s LPGA tour cease in Gilbert, Ariz., with fellow professional Olivia Cowan. So after the trophy ceremony, off they went. Victory dinner was a burger at In-N-Out — facet of fries, Animal-Fashion — and the six-hour odyssey continued.
“Big mistake,” Korda says, considering again on that night time. “The adrenaline wore off, we obtained there at, like, 11:30 and my complete physique was simply aching.”
Korda incessantly references the psychological and bodily toll of being in rivalry. She incessantly references simply how a lot she loves being in rivalry, too. This 12 months? For some time, she was in rivalry each time she teed it up. Korda labored her means into the combo at that week’s Ford Championship, then shot Sunday’s lowest rating, a seven-under 65, in robust circumstances to rally to the win. It was her third in three begins. Her lead at World No. 1 had widened. And Korda would rejoice the win in the identical means: with a drive throughout the desert. The subsequent week’s occasion was in Las Vegas, so she headed north, this time alone. In-N-Out was closed for Easter Sunday, however she’d saved an almond croissant for the event. Another street snack — “I picked up some corn nuts and had myself a pleasant meal,” she says — and he or she was able to roll.
There’s a way more glamorous facet to Korda’s place within the cultural panorama. She’s the face of girls’s golf, a generational expertise with a picture-perfect swing. She has blue-chip endorsement offers with the likes of Nike, Delta and Goldman Sachs. She shared the purple carpet with world A-listers at this spring’s Met Gala. Alternatives and invites have stacked up virtually as quick as her first-place finishes. However she’s most comfy prepping for the following one, alone at house on the vary. And when she wins?
“I get within the automotive and I blare music,” she says. “That’s form of my completely happy place. That’s how I rejoice.”
So she drove into the night time, arriving in Vegas happy and exhausted. She’d go on to win that event, too.
THE NIGHT THAT XANDER SCHAUFFELE WON this 12 months’s PGA Championship, at Valhalla GC, in Louisville, Ky., he couldn’t sleep. He and his spouse, Maya, had hosted a bit get together at their rental house there. They’d poured beers into the huge Wanamaker Trophy. Emptied it. Crammed it once more. On the course, Schauffele is locked in and inscrutable, however after years of shut calls — 12 earlier prime 10s in majors and 6 prime fives — he’d lastly damaged by way of, and it was price celebrating. That night time, as he watched a replay of his birdie putt on Valhalla’s 18th gap, the exhilaration of the win was unmistakable, however two extra dominant feelings overtook him. “Reduction,” he says, “and validation.”
The chums left between 2 and three a.m., however Schauffele was wired.
“I used to be simply so fired up,” he says.
Along with the night time’s festivities, one second of real satisfaction stands out.
“It was all the best way to five a.m., and I’m nonetheless up. I bear in mind I used to be brushing my tooth. I appeared up and simply had a second with myself within the mirror,” he says laughing however, nonetheless, in all seriousness. “And I used to be like, ‘You probably did it.’”
THERE ARE COMPELLING SIMILARITIES between these two, the season’s hottest golfers not named Scottie, who additionally occur to be the reigning gold medalists coming into the 2024 Summer time Olympics in Paris — and also you don’t must squint terribly laborious to see them. Each Schauffele and Korda are diligent employees. They’re low-key and properly preferred. Each use phrases like “I let my golf equipment do the speaking.” They’re obsessive about course of. They’re the youngsters of European immigrants who’d chased Olympic goals of their very own earlier than transferring their households to the States and pulling up front-row seats to observe their kids pursue greatness.
Although Nelly’s father, Petr, a former top-tier Czech professional tennis participant, is extra routinely cited because the power behind his daughter’s aggressive profession, he by no means competed within the Olympic Video games. Nelly’s mom, Regina Rajchrtová, additionally a retired tennis skilled, represented Czechoslovakia within the 1988 Summer time Video games.
Whereas no up to date golfers grew up dreaming of Olympic glory — the worldwide competitors was golf-free from 1904 till 2016 — within the Korda family the Video games have been must-see TV.
“It was such a household factor for us,” Nelly remembers. “Each 4 years we’d sit in entrance of the tv and watch each sport, particularly observe and area, gymnastics and swimming. However I by no means dreamed of standing on a podium and seeing my nation’s flag get raised. I by no means thought I’d have that chance. After which, after I lastly did, I had this rush of emotion that I’ve by no means needed to at the present time. It was simply such a surreal and superb expertise.”
What made Nelly’s journey on the 2020 Video games in Tokyo much more satisfying was having her sister, six-time LPGA winner Jessica Korda, at her facet. Jess managed to safe certainly one of Group U.S.A.’s closing qualifying spots, thus incomes the title of Olympian that neither Petr nor Nelly’s brother Sebastian — at present the Twenty second-ranked males’s tennis participant on the earth — can lay declare to. (Sebastian, sustaining a laser give attention to hard-court season, has really turned down spots on the final two Olympic groups.)
“It’s our women membership,” Nelly says, cheekily.
SCHAUFFELE’S FATHER, STEFAN, had been an aspiring Olympian himself. A automotive crash on his method to coaching at some point dashed his goals of competing as a decathlete for his native Germany. However in his son, he too noticed the potential for greatness.
“It’s such a novel factor for me particularly, as a result of my dad was the one that taught me the best way to play golf, and he gave me all of the knowledge he had based mostly on his personal experiences,” Xander says. “I used to be the apprentice working my means up below his mentorship. So then, y’know, having the ability to ship this factor that the grasp at all times wished — it sounds actually corny, actually silly, nevertheless it seems like that’s what I did. The truth that the grasp was my dad makes it that rather more wild.”
Given golf ’s fickle nature, anybody within the males’s and ladies’s fields might have gained gold on the 2020 Video games. There are Cinderella tales on a regular basis on the PGA and LPGA excursions. However the title of gold-medal Olympian is so large, so vital and so scarce — you maintain the throne for 4 years — it will have felt unusual for a random journeyman to emerge that summer season as champion. Korda and Schauffele have been something however random. On the time, in August 2021 (the 2020 Video games have been pushed again a 12 months as a result of pandemic), she was World No. 1 and he was World No. 5; every had a knack for contending in big-time occasions and possessed boundless potential. Not like a few of their friends, who opted out of the Olympics, they jumped on the likelihood to symbolize their nation and their sport. That made them deserving champions and ideally suited representatives for golf on its new world stage.
Extremely, their wins solely look higher with time. The 2024 season has been a high-water mark for each gamers. Korda has been traditionally — preposterously — good, successful six of seven begins at one level within the season and taking such a commanding lead within the Rolex Rankings that her factors complete reached a top greater than double that of World No. 2 Lilia Vu. Schauffele was already taking part in the very best and most constant golf of his profession earlier than successful at Valhalla, a victory that immediately relieved him of the dreaded best-player-to-never-win-a-major rap and recast his previous shut calls as “good experiences” relatively than “missed alternatives.” Then he did it once more at Royal Troon eventually month’s Open, cementing himself as not only a common main contender however a man who can shut out the large ones, like he did in Tokyo with a 100-yard wedge shot to 2 ft on the final.
Now Schauffele is in Paris and Korda shall be quickly. The boys’s competitors kicks off Thursday, Aug. 1. The ladies begin play the next Wednesday, Aug. 7. They’ll every be among the many favorites to contend and defend.
WITH A 2024 RUN AS GOOD AND LONG as Korda’s was to start out the 12 months, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that fatigue or strain or perhaps a lapse in motivation might set in. Is it attainable to tire of successful? In all probability not. However apparently, the last word excessive of her 12 months got here simply earlier than its final low — in Lancaster, Pa., on the 2024 U.S. Girls’s Open.
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“Seeing everybody on the market to observe, seeing the little youngsters, listening to from their mothers and dads that I encourage their kids — that, to me, is the very best half,” Korda says of that week and her runaway success. “There was this one woman who I assume had watched me in 2021 on the KPMG and waited so lengthy simply to see me and meet me once more. Her dad instructed me they’d saved a spot on her flag [for my autograph], and after I lastly noticed her I randomly had two gloves in my again pocket, so I gave her one and he or she simply began crying. As I walked away I began getting tears in my eyes as a result of I used to be simply, like — to have the ability to have that sort of affect, it’s simply unbelievable.”
Then got here the agony. Korda, the heavy pre-tournament favourite, made a septuple-bogey 10 on the third gap of her first spherical, chipping thrice consecutively into the creek that guards Lancaster CC’s diabolical twelfth inexperienced. She’d by no means skilled something prefer it.
“That mistake, that second, it simply stored going,” she says. “I simply stored doing it over and time and again. It was to the purpose the place I used to be like, Okay, what? I’ve gotten good breaks. I’ve gained six out of eight of my occasions this 12 months. I feel that that is the golf gods telling me it’s time to present again a bit.”
Korda made a valiant cost for the lower line on Friday however fell a number of photographs wanting taking part in on the weekend, a surprising outcome within the greatest occasion on the LPGA schedule. Extra disappointment got here within the weeks that adopted: two extra missed cuts. Even worse, she suffered a dog-bite damage after the KPMG Girls’s PGA Championship and missed her subsequent occasion after that. She completed T26 on the Evian, completely respectable have been it not for the impossibly excessive customary she’d already set.
So it was again to Bradenton, Fla., to house base, the place there are only a few professional golfers and loads of vary balls. Again to constructing. Simply the best way Korda likes it. That’s the place she will be able to go off the grid and get to work chasing that subsequent dose of quiet satisfaction, that subsequent well-earned almond croissant, that subsequent music-blaring street journey that comes with victory.
SCHAUFFELE IS CHASING SOMETHING, TOO. For in addition to his 12 months has gone — he two majors and 12 prime 10s in his first 17 begins — he nonetheless has his eyes set on World No. 1. Scheffler — himself an Olympian for the primary time, and this week’s betting favourite — has opened up a Korda-sized hole atop the OWGR. In his post-PGA-win press convention, Schauffele spun a vivid analogy: Scheffler sits on the mountain’s peak, and the victory in Valhalla allowed Xander to a minimum of pause and luxuriate in a beer a methods down from that summit. Requested if he believes he’s the closest, amongst Tour execs, to dethroning Scheffler, he served up one other analogy.
“What’s it referred to as in biking, the peloton?” Schauffele stated. “I’m at present second on the earth, however I really feel like I’m on the tip of the peloton, with binoculars, trying means forward at him. He’s undoubtedly a staple within the prime two on each leaderboard every week.” Victory at Troon marked additional progress. However Schauffele, too, enjoys having mountain left to climb.
Schauffele’s strides haven’t come by likelihood. Within the offseason, the 30-year-old made vital distance good points off the tee and now ranks inside the highest 10 in clubhead velocity. And although his father stays a trusted advisor, Schauffele is now working with GOLF Prime 100 Trainer Chris Como, whose insights have been a sport changer.
“He’s helped me perceive issues I didn’t actually perceive earlier than in my swing,” Schauffele says. “The dos and don’ts, the whys. And people sleepless nights the place I had gone down the rabbit gap making an attempt to determine issues out by myself, he’s are available and actually defined a variety of it to me and is smart to me, and I’m capable of take it and apply it.”
With larger success comes an even bigger platform and greater questions on broader matters. In males’s skilled golf meaning politics and protracted queries in regards to the sport’s future. Schauffele is about as straight a shooter as they arrive — “I sometimes attempt to not lie, as a result of it’s only a actually dangerous net you spin for your self, and then you definately don’t even know the place you might be,” he says — however he has little interest in going a lot deeper on professional golf’s energy wrestle than he already has.
“What’s gotten me right here is strictly the truth that I stored my head down and didn’t dive into this off-course stuff that everybody actually needs to speak about,” he says. He’s staying in his course of. He’s centered on endurance. He’s readying himself for fixed enchancment over the course of years. He needs one main to show into extra. He needs one other gold medal, too.
Korda additionally covets repeat gold, however, like Schauffele, she is aware of there’s no faking the work required to get there. The excellent news?
“I completely love this sport,” she says. “Some folks get uninterested in it as a result of they lose the love for it. However, like, you’re at all times going to be motivated to be higher if you happen to love one thing. I’m not a golf nerd; I ought to know extra golf historical past and I ought to know extra about, like, architects. However I like competing and I like taking part in.
“Like, yesterday I went out and I used to be on my own and I made an eagle and I simply screamed and began operating across the inexperienced. I simply really feel like a child after I’m on the market on my own. I’m simply, like, I’m 25 years outdated and I get to do that as my job?”
It’s an angle pretty much as good as gold.
