Nelly Korda put three balls within the water on the twelfth gap to make a leaderboard-sliding 10.
Peacock
LANCASTER, Pa. — The golf world has been watching Nelly Korda’s actions with nice intrigue over the past six months, and for good cause. Korda has been driving one of many greatest heaters within the historical past of girls’s golf, profitable six of her final seven begins and establishing a gulf between her and the next-best participant on this planet.
The golf world was additionally watching Nelly Korda’s actions with nice intrigue on Thursday morning on the U.S. Girls’s Open at Lancaster Nation Membership, however for a markedly totally different cause. Korda had simply carded probably the most stunning scores of her skilled golf profession — a septuple-bogey 10 on the par-3 twelfth — to place her bid at a first-career U.S. Open title on life help simply minutes into the match.
The catastrophe got here on a 161-yard par-3 that’s enjoying because the hardest on the course by way of the early going. After blowing her tee shot lengthy, Korda hit three straight photographs into the creek operating throughout the entrance of the inexperienced, then missed a putt to stroll away with a seven-over 10.
As two consecutive 30-yard chips rolled again into the water in entrance of the inexperienced, Korda seemed on in disbelief, shielding her head in her palms and, at one level, dropping to a defeated crouch. When it was over, she’d dropped to eight over for the championship, 10 photographs again of the lead and out of the blue needing a cost to maintain her hopes of reaching the weekend alive.
Korda herself intimated earlier within the week that the twelfth may very well be a terrifying spot for the sphere. The outlet is among the trickier tee photographs at this 12 months’s U.S. Girls’s Open, with the inexperienced sitting simply above a sloping false entrance main into the water.
“From the tee field you’ll be able to’t see how sloped of a inexperienced that’s, however then when you get onto that inexperienced you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re coming in with a 6-iron,’” Korda mentioned Tuesday. “In case you’re lengthy, in a way, you’re type of screwed. In case you’re brief, you’re screwed, too. So ensuring you’re simply hitting the greens out right here this week, as a result of they’re so small and so undulated, goes to be key.”
With winds swirling on Thursday morning, Korda did precisely what she knew she couldn’t, flying her tee shot into the bunker lengthy. When she caught her shot from the sand too cleanly, she watched helplessly because it trickled into the creek. The subsequent two chips seemed innocent sufficient, however Korda caught each just a little too heavy, sending them spinning into the false back and front right down to the creek.
The excellent news — if there’s excellent news — is that the septuple got here very early into the match, simply three holes into Korda’s opening spherical. With Lancaster CC as soon as once more proving to be a formidable take a look at for the very best on this planet, there’s ample time to get her rating again down to a few over, which can be sufficient to remain within the dialog.
However that’s assuming she’s capable of neglect the catastrophe on 12 rapidly. As anybody who’s ever carded a double-digit rating is aware of, that’s no straightforward process, even for the very best on this planet.
