Nelly Korda simply seized the lead. This is why this time’s completely different

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Nelly Korda doesn’t need to suppose forward. She’s a graduate of the identical faculty as Scottie Scheffler. Sunday? We’ve bought Saturday first. One shot at a time. Outcomes don’t outline me. They arrive from trusting my course of. 

“I’m simply attempting to remain very current,” she provided Friday afternoon.

Sure, however … she has a 3-shot lead at halftime of the AIG Girls’s Open on the Previous Course in St. Andrews. Legacy-defining moments don’t simply manifest instantly on the ultimate gap of a match. They percolate, from Tuesday to Thursday to Saturday morning and Sunday night time. Korda’s second is percolating.

That the 26-year-old, undisputed best-golfer-on-the-planet sits atop the leaderboard could not shock you. That’s been a theme of the whole season. That Korda has ripped round with only a single bogey is spectacular. That she’s doing it with a putter she picked up Wednesday is, too. However when it’s occurring and the place it’s occurring and what’s occurred earlier than that is vital. It’s been a really bizarre summer time for Korda. And it’s blowing a hoolie, because the Scottish say. 

Three months in the past, Korda gained the Mizuho Americas Open for a barely-believable sixth victory in seven occasions. She performed 3 times within the subsequent 5 weeks and missed the lower in all three. She failed to interrupt 80 in two completely different majors. She went on trip. She contended for a medal on the Olympics earlier than a puzzling ejection down the stretch. Then she spent per week in Prague together with her household, “recharging” her batteries and confirmed as much as St. Andrews not the betting favourite. The rationale for that isn’t a lot about current play as it’s the setting. Her greatest end in a Girls’s Open got here 5 years in the past —  her solely high 10 — when she completed T9 at Woburn Golf Membership, an inland, heathland course north of London. It was about 20 levels hotter. Nobody talked concerning the wind. 

A match like this in a spot like St. Andrews — the place gusts are frequently breaching 35 mph and greens are being slowed down simply to make them playable — is golf’s closest factor to the best way grand slam tennis championships are performed on completely different surfaces. As a way to be an all-timer in tennis, it’s important to win on laborious courts, grass courts and clay courts. In Melbourne and Paris and London and New York. In golf you’ll be able to win on the Bermudagrass comforts of sweaty Florida, however to be an all-timer it’s important to do it at an Open, within the wind and the rain and the unpredictable bounces of a agency hyperlinks. 

Roger Federer gained only one French Open on the slippery clay of Roland Garros however damnit he found out a strategy to do it, simply the as soon as, in 2009. (Rafael Nadal took over from there.) It took Andre Agassi 13 tries to win there however he bought it accomplished, too. Iga Swiatek, the No. 1 ladies’s participant on this planet, is aptly nicknamed the Queen of Clay, however she will’t lower it on the Wimbledon grass. Within the different three slams, she wins at an 85% clip. In southwest London, she wins simply 69% of the time. If it confuses you, think about what it does to her. 

Korda would perceive the comparability higher than most; each her dad and mom had been skilled tennis gamers. As she travels from match to match, Nelly tunes in to look at her brother, Sebastian, play the assorted stops of the lads’s tennis tour. Seb is basically good, not-yet-great, ranked sixteenth on this planet. The moment he wins a slam — on any floor — the following query might be, can he win on one other one?

His massive sister has gained mainly in every single place. Nonetheless, the entire household is aware of a win in St. Andrews can be completely different.

I requested Nelly about that concept Friday. Successful is nice in every single place, however may or not it’s extra validating to do it proper right here, proper now?

“For certain,” she replied. “I feel simply this yr on the whole, I’ve gained on simply so many various kinds of grasses in various kinds of circumstances that you just simply sort of all the time need to adapt. That’s the identical factor in tennis, similar factor in life. You’re all the time adapting to your conditions at hand, and I feel that’s what’s so enjoyable about hyperlinks golf is you’re actually beginning it 30 yards left of your goal. I’m not a fade participant however I’m hitting huge fades. I feel it’s enjoyable hitting these little low drivers, too.

“I’m having enjoyable, and I get pleasure from hyperlinks golf loads. Clearly yearly that I get to play it, I study somewhat bit extra about it, too.”

Korda feels like different {golfing} greats when she talks like that. Like Rory McIlroy lacking three straight U.S. Open cuts earlier than 5 straight high 10s. Or Phil Mickelson taking twenty years to discover ways to management the ball alongside the bottom in linksland. When it lastly all got here collectively in a win at Muirfield in 2013, he referred to as it his biggest achievement. As a result of triumph after repeated failure feels higher than triumph by itself.