Nelly Korda fought onerous all through her Thursday spherical on the KPMG Girls’s PGA Championship. She signed for a 3-under 69 and at present leads the sector by one stroke with half the sector left to play.
Korda started her day on the again 9 and went out in 33 strokes. She recorded 4 birdies in her first 5 holes.
Regardless of carding a 69, the Florida resident needed to scramble all through her first spherical. The Douglass fir, pink cedar and hemlock timber on the Sahalee Nation Membership course did their jobs as they made Korda work for her rating.
“In the event you try to be aggressive whenever you’ve hit it offline, it simply bites you within the butt,” Korda stated after her first spherical. “Total, I feel I performed fairly effectively. I took my probabilities the place I might and I performed secure nearly all of the spherical.”
She made birdies on holes 13-15 earlier than to get to 3-under. Korda moved to 4-under after a birdie on the 4th. Nonetheless, the 25-year-old coughed up two pictures on the fourth because the 14-time LPGA winner made a double-bogey.
“This complete golf course is so demanding. I needed to make some fairly good up-and-downs,” Korda stated.
Korda closed her spherical with a 15-foot birdie putt on the ninth to get again to 3-under on the day, giving her some much-needed momentum.
It’s a a lot better begin than her final main championship begin. Three weeks in the past, Korda shot an 80 at Lancaster Nation Membership within the first spherical of the U.S. Girls’s Open. She shot 10 strokes higher on Friday with an even-par 70 however missed her first minimize of the 2024 season.
The two-time main winner additionally missed the minimize ultimately week’s Meijer LPGA Basic after she shot a 76 and 67. It’s the first time all season that the No. 1 ranked participant on this planet missed consecutive cuts. Previous to that, she received the Mizuho Americas Open for her sixth victory of the 12 months.
Korda made historical past by profitable 5 straight earlier than she settled for a T7 on the Cognizant Founders Cup.
She’s going to tee off with Ruoning Yin and Hannah Inexperienced at 1:28 p.m. PT or 4:28 p.m. ET for her second spherical of the KMPG Girls’s PGA Championship.
Savannah Leigh Richardson is a golf workers author for SB Nation’s Taking part in By way of. For extra golf protection, observe us @_PlayingThrough on all main social platforms. You may as well observe her on Twitter @SportsGirlSL and Instagram @savannah_leigh_sports.
