Nelly Korda Ties Unwanted Career Record That Tiger Woods Set 15 Years Ago

Last year, Nelly Korda was unstoppable on the golf course, tying with legends like Annika Sörenstam by winning five tournaments in a row. She became the first player to win seven times in a single season since Yani Tseng in 2011 and the first American since Beth Daniel in 1990. Chatter of her ruling the golf world grew louder, but now her fate is similar to what Tiger Woods‘s was like in 2010.

Woods went from being a 7-time PGA Tour winner in 2009, including 6 PGA Tour events and the FedEx Cup, to being winless in 2010. He looked invincible every time he stepped onto a tee box with his red shirt in 2009, and fans thought he would smash every record Jack Nicklaus ever set. But he could only play 12 events that season, won zero, and failed to qualify for the Tour Championship.

Korda had resilience to change things last week at Tiburón Gold Course, and she was well aware of it. “It’s definitely been an interesting year, I would say…. But yeah, it definitely s**ks in a way that I didn’t get to raise a trophy. But I still have one more week to try to get that done,” Korda said before the CME Group Tour Championship.  Nothing changed for Nelly since it was #1 Jeeno Thitkul who lifted the cup.

“There has been good, there have been flashes of really good, and there have been flashes of I don’t know what just happened. But I would say overall that’s just kind of golf. Coming off last year, it’s kind of always going to be difficult to back that up,” she also said before the season finale.

Korda started strong at the HGV Tournament of Champions in Orlando, finishing as the runner-up. The biggest pain arrived during the U.S. Women’s Open at Erin Hills. What happened was Korda stood on the 72nd hole and hit a shot she later called “too good” because of the adrenaline pumping. The ball flew into a “dead zone” valley, leading to a bogey, and she ended with a T2 finish after the winner, Maja Stark.

A closer overall look at the numbers shows that Korda didn’t actually play poorly. She made the cut in all 19 tournaments she entered this year and made a top 10 finish 9 times. She also ranked first in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee. Even Lydia Ko praised her.

“She has better stats than last year, but she hasn’t won, and she won seven or eight times last year. Sometimes it isn’t stats. Like if you did that, you would think, ‘Okay, you would win X amount of times.’ There are so many variables, and you’re playing against 143 other players. It’s just a lot of things.”

And Korda isn’t hopeless as well; as she herself said, “A grind. Yeah, just there was—I feel like there were a lot of ups and downs, and it made me grow a lot mentally, and I would say I’m just also very grateful for it because, you know, success is never linear… I would just say expectations, listening to outside noises, and really just sticking to what I know best, and that’s to keep everything simple,” about her winless season after the season finale.

Now, if Korda was the story of what didn’t happen, Jeeno Thitikul was the story of what did.

Jeeno Thitikul had a stunning 2025

The 22-year-old star overtook Korda for the World No. 1 ranking in August 2025, following the AIG Women’s Open. And now, Thitikul won the season finale strongly with a 26-under-par score, by four shots over Pajaree Anannarukarn and six shots over Korda, and secured the biggest prize in women’s golf history. With that, Thitikul swept the season-ending honors, the Rolex Player of the Year, and the Vare Trophy with a scoring average of 68.681, and broke the all-time LPGA single-season scoring record set by Annika Sörenstam in 2002 (68.697).

And while Korda was the standout player of 2024 and almost untouched, the 2025 LPGA Tour produced 29 different winners in a single season. We have seen several players, such as Miyu Yamashita, the Iwai Twins (Chisato and Akie Iwai), Lottie Woad, and even players ranked outside the Top 50, capable of winning on any given week. So it is another reason why the 2025 season will always be significant.