Nelly Korda’s sister, Jessica, attempted to sum up the feeling after she just witnessed Nelly, already the world’s top-ranked player, edge Mone Inami and Lydia Ko by a single shot to win Olympic gold in Tokyo.

“This is like total like GOAT status for me,” Jessica Korda said. “To win three times in a season, be world No. 1 and now she’s kind of like going for gold. I mean, you guys write for a living; this is exactly what you would want to write about.”

What Nelly has done since that moment has likely only further cemented her status – 10 wins, including a run of five straight capped by a major.

World rank: 1st (1st after Olympic victory)

LPGA Wins (8): 2021 Pelican Women’s Championship, 2022 Pelican Women’s Championship, 2024 LPGA Drive On Championship, 2024 Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship, 2024 Ford Championship, 2024 T-Mobile Match Play, 2024 Chevron Championship (major), 2024 Mizuho Americas Open

Highlight: Korda was coming off a T-16 at the season-opening Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions when she won the LPGA Drive On Championship in a playoff over Lydia Ko. “Good ol’ Nelly fashion making it dramatic,” she said afterward. After that, though, she left little to doubt. She climbed back to No. 1 in the world in her next start, eight weeks later at the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship, and won in each of the next two weeks, too. Finally, Korda tied Annika Sorenstam and Nancy Lopez for the LPGA record for consecutive wins with five by capturing the year’s opening major, the Chevron Championship. “It's just been a crazy, crazy, crazy couple of weeks, with some really solid golf,” Korda said of her historic run. “I can finally breathe.” She’d tie for seventh three weeks later at the Cognizant Founders Cup before winning again, at the Mizuho Americas Open, and despite three missed cuts in her last four starts, two majors, Korda still has a nearly four-and-a-half-point lead on world No. 2 Lilia Vu, a fellow American Olympian.

Lowlight: While Korda suffered a dog bite after last month’s KPMG Women’s PGA, that injury was relatively minor compared to what she went through a couple years ago. Korda didn’t play for 17 weeks after being diagnosed with a blood clot in March 2022 while she was in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, for an instruction shoot around The Players. “It was scary,” Korda’s instructor, Jamie Mulligan, told Golfweek. “You know, it was two centimeters from her heart. I mean, she could’ve died.” Korda returned to tie for eighth at the U.S. Women’s Open, later won an Aramco Team Series event on the Ladies European Tour and then got back in the LPGA winner’s circle in November at the Pelican. After that win, the article with Mulligan was published – and Korda was not happy. “I think that was blown out of proportion a good bit,” Korda said. “Yeah, it was definitely not that bad, but I’m very private about my medical history, my medical issues. So, in a sense, yeah, I think that article is just blown out of proportion, honestly.”

Olympic odds: +600