Nelly Korda’s 2026 season has been an emphatic response to her winless 2025 campaign. She’s relied on a new mindset and an on-course freedom that she has connected to her off-course happiness, maturity and a competitive drive that received unlimited fuel after 2025. It’s been effective.
Korda opened her season with a win. Then she won the first major of the year in emphatic fashion and followed that up by achieving a lifelong dream, winning the U.S. Women’s Open at Riviera. On the heels of that blistering start, the LPGA created a “scrappy” marketing plan to introduce Korda to a larger sports audience and bring in new eyeballs to the sport as she readied for the year’s final three majors and a chance to punch her ticket to the LPGA Hall of Fame. Korda’s season leveled off after that. Her putter went cold at the KPMG Women’s PGA, she missed the cut at the Evian and was one of many players to let a golden opportunity slip through her fingers at the AIG Women’s Open.
Korda took a few weeks off after the major season concluded, but much like fellow World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, Nelly Korda’s competitive fire is always raging. While the major season is over, Nelly Korda still has at least one more big box to check off this season: win the Solheim Cup on European soil.
“Now it’s real,” Korda said on Wednesday at the FM Championship about looking ahead to the Solheim Cup in two weeks. “Now it’s time to get ready after this week for the Netherlands and to represent our country. There is no greater feeling, especially stepping onto that first tee box.”
On Monday, USA captain Angela Stanford announced that Rose Zhang, Lindy Duncan and Megan Khang would be the final three players to fill out the American roster. Those three will join Korda, Angel Yin, Jennifer Kupcho, Yealimi Noh, Auston Kim, Lauren Coughlin, Allisen Corpuz, Andrea Lee and Alison Lee on the team that will head to the Netherlands in two weeks.
Korda and Khang have the most appearances on the team. But as a four-time major champion and World No. 1, Korda, who is 10-5-1 in four career Solheim Cups, is Team USA’s leader. But that’s a role she’ll approach differently than you might think.
“I’m getting old,” Korda said, laughing, on Wednesday at TPC Boston when asked about being the team’s leader.
“I definitely enjoy it. I mean, I feel like we only have two rookies on Tour. We have Lindy, but she’s a vet on Tour. She’s gone through so much. I think already that week we have a lot of experience. Everything, when it comes to the Solheim Cup, is about experience. I feel like being over the pond and not having the fan base that, let’s say, we had when we played over here, we have to lean on each other a little bit more. That’s kind of what I learned through playing in Solheim Cups.
“But I feel like everyone on that team is very vocal and comfortable with each other, so we can all lean on each other and kind of all feel like leaders. I feel like it’s better when it’s all equal, so no one feels like the big dog in a sense, and we’re all just there to have fun and play for our country.”
However, Korda’s best asset as Team USA’s leader might be her newfound mentality, a focus on the positive that allowed her to run rampant over the sport for the first several months. At the Chevron Championship in April, Korda and her longtime caddie Jason McDede harped on the importance of letting things “roll off her back” and allowing her to “play Nelly Korda golf” for 72 holes. Bad shots will happen, but you have to accept them and flush them.
On Wednesday at TPC Boston, Korda was asked by a young fan what advice she’d give to young girls just starting out in golf. As is often the case, the simplest questions give the best insight, even into areas they weren’t meant to probe.
“That’s it’s actually not easy,” Korda joked with a smile. “Never get discouraged because everyone has bad days. We all hit bad shots. I chunked a shot on 17. I hit bad shots, too. So no matter how good you feel that you are, like you’re still going to hit bad shots. You’re still going to have bad days. But never get discouraged, and if you have the love for it, just keep going.”
Playing on foreign soil against a European team led by Charley Hull, Lottie Woad and Esther Henseleit, the Americans will need Korda to lead with her play and her attitude if they plan to leave Bernardus Golf with the Solheim Cup. There will be moments when the momentum shifts and the Europeans are riding a wave of momentum that threatens to wash the Americans away. It will be on Korda to serve as a stabilizing force whom everyone can follow as the Americans try to win their first Solheim Cup on European soil since 2015.
In a year that has seen Nelly Korda already achieve her greatest dream, don’t think that isn’t also on her radar. There’s no coast in Nelly Korda. She’s always hunting something.
“[I] don’t really have too much time off after this,” Korda said of her schedule post-majors. “We head to the Netherlands. That’s also fuel in itself.”