Nelly Korda’s U.S. Open derailed by septuple bogey in brutal opening round

Starting on the back nine at Lancaster Country Club on Thursday morning, Korda, the prohibitive favorite to win her first U.S. Women’s Open, further unraveled. Her card included six more bogeys on the way to a 10-over-par 80, a stunning result that left her 12 shots off the lead and in jeopardy of missing the cut.

Yuka Saso posted a 2-under 68 for a one-shot lead over three players, including American Andrea Lee.

Korda’s travails extended a run of confounding performances at the most prestigious event in women’s golf for a player who came into the week having won six of seven starts, including the Chevron Championship, the year’s first major. Korda’s score was her second consecutive 80 at the U.S. Women’s Open following an 8 over in the final round last year at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

“Yeah, I just really didn’t want to shoot 80, and I just kept making bogeys,” said Korda, whose only professional round higher than Thursday’s was a closing 81 in her first U.S. Open start in 2013. “My last two rounds at the U.S. Women’s Open have not been good. I’m human. I’m going to have bad days. I played some really solid golf up to this point. Today was just a bad day. That’s all I can say.”

Korda began her round with a bogey at the par-4 10th, pulling a putt from inside 14 feet to roughly 20 inches. Then she had a nearly half an hour wait before her group was able to tee off at No. 12, ranked the most difficult hole at the previous U.S. Women’s Open held at Lancaster Country Club in 2015.

Korda’s tee ball found a bunker behind the 161-yard hole. Her second shot from the sand failed to hold the green, rolling into the water guarding the front of the undulating putting surface. Her next two shots from beyond the hazard also ended in the water before an eighth stroke finally settled onto the green 10 feet from the cup.

She missed that putt, becoming the latest victim at No. 12 as the gallery around the green watched in disbelief. Over the first several hours Thursday morning, the hole produced eight double bogeys or worse, underscoring its difficulty, which caught players’ attention during practice rounds.

By the afternoon wave Thursday, No. 12 had rendered 20 scores of double bogey or worse. The next hardest hole by that metric was the par-4 fourth, which had yielded eight double bogeys or worse.

“It was tough to watch,” said Megan Khang (5 over), one of Korda’s closest friends on the LPGA Tour, who played in the same group along with Japan’s Nasa Hataoka (3 over).

Korda’s opening-round collapse, in which she uncommonly missed eight of 14 fairways, was a shocking turn of events given how well she had been striking the ball this year. Most recently she closed with 33 on the back nine to outlast Hannah Green by a stroke at the Mizuho Americas Open in Jersey City, in the shadow of Manhattan.

At the Chevron Championship, Korda posted four rounds in the 60s at the Club at Carlton Woods outside Houston, capped by a closing 69 to win by two shots over Sweden’s Maja Stark. She collected a winner’s check for $1.2 million, the highest payout in the history of the tournament.

That triumph was Korda’s fifth in as many starts, placing her in the company of Hall of Famers Nancy Lopez and Annika Sorenstam as the only players to win that many tournaments in a row. It also was the second major championship win for Korda following a victory at the Women’s PGA Championship in 2021 at the Atlanta Athletic Club’s Highland Course.

She is also believed to be the only player in women’s golf history to win six times in seven starts, dating from at least 1980, when the LPGA Tour began compiling official statistics.

“I mean, not a lot of positive thoughts, honestly,” Korda said. “Just honestly, I just didn’t play well today. I didn’t hit it good. I found myself in the rough a lot. Making a 10 on a par-3 will definitely not do you any good at [the] U.S. Open. I started off really poorly but played pretty well on the back nine, but overall, yeah, just a bad day at the office.”

The 6,583-yard layout, with 13 fully or partially blind approaches, doomed a handful of other top players. Lydia Ko, ranked 14th and one point from a spot in the LPGA Hall of Fame, also shot 10 over. Reigning U.S. Women’s Open champion Allisen Corpuz fired a 5-over 75.

South Korea’s Jin Young Ko, ranked seventh and a former world No. 1 for a record 159 weeks, shot 5 over, as did England’s Charley Hull, ranked eighth.

“I just knew it was going to be a grind out there,” Lee said. “I mean, this golf course is such a test. It’s a beast of a golf course really, and par’s a really good score out here.”