LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Nelly Korda fell just short of her first U.S. Women\u2019s Open title a year ago, coming up second to Maja Stark in a finish that was painfully appropriate for her inexplicably winless calendar year.<\/p>\n
But that disappointment at Erin Hills is a primary reason Korda arrived at venerable Riviera this week as the world\u2019s No. 1 player and a favorite to raise the trophy at the 81st Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just hungry for more,\u201d Korda said of last year\u2019s Open experience. \u201cLast year was just a weird year of kind of not necessarily playing my best, but also when I did, not getting the bounces or just missing by a centimeter here and there. But I also learned a lot about myself. It made me hungrier to be in those positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Korda has been eating this year, all right.<\/p>\n
A dominant major title at The Chevron Championship. Three victories overall. Three more second-place finishes, and an emphatic return to the top of the rankings.<\/p>\n
Korda says she welcomes the pressure that accompanies her success, and she is thrilled to be under the spotlight and playing for the richest prize pool in women\u2019s golf at the first women\u2019s Open ever held at Riviera, the 100-year-old country club nestled in Pacific Palisades and patronized by decades of Hollywood royalty.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just motivated to put myself into that position, to grind on off weeks, to just play the game,\u201d Korda said. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to explain, but there\u2019s nothing better when you\u2019re a very competitive person than being in the hunt on a back nine at a tournament. There\u2019s a really big rush of emotions. Even if it doesn\u2019t work out, you constantly want to put yourself back into that, because all that work that you\u2019ve put in in your off weeks. That\u2019s what makes it worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Korda took the past two weeks off to make sure she was fully rested and prepared for the Open and for Riviera, a course she had played only once before this week. This tournament has never been held anywhere in Los Angeles County, easily the most populous in the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing out here,\u201d Korda said. \u201cI mean, the vibe of the place, knowing that so much history has been played out here, it\u2019s a great place for us to play.\u201d
\nStark contrast<\/p>\n
Stark began the week by returning the trophy she won by holding off Korda last year at the Open, but she wasn\u2019t sad to comply with tradition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did kind of want to let it go, because it\u2019s weird \u2014 it\u2019s like I had it sitting in my room, and I just saw it every day,\u201d Stark said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, this is cool.\u2019 But I just want to move on. I want the challenge again. It was fun to have it, but it\u2019s more fun to play for it than to have it, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stark had been on the fringes of the LPGA Tour field before her victory last year at Erin Hills \u2014 but after securing her tour status with a major win, the Swede promptly missed the cut in five of her next seven tournaments. She\u2019s now paying more attention to the mental side of her game, hiring a therapist and a sports psychologist.<\/p>\n
The results are promising: Stark is up to 23rd in the world after making seven cuts in eight starts this season, finishing 16th in Cincinnati three weeks ago.
\nFirst starts<\/p>\n
Megha Ganne is beginning her pro career at Riviera just one week after last year\u2019s U.S. Women\u2019s Amateur champion led Stanford to another NCAA title, making the winning putt to beat USC down the coast in Carlsbad, California. Trojans star and Irvine native Catherine Park is also making her pro debut at Riviera.<\/p>\n
Ganne played in the final group of the 2021 Open as a 17-year-old high schooler at Olympic Club in San Francisco, eventually finishing as the top amateur. As her pro career approached, she has been leaning on her LPGA Tour friends, including three-time major champion Lydia Ko.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing a professional is about the little stuff, and the stuff you can\u2019t really see, like invisible little details,\u201d Ganne said. \u201cThat stuff comes with experience, time, maturity and having a good team around you.\u201d<\/p>\n
No matter how her debut goes, Ganne is graduating from Stanford next week.
\nWie\u2019s back<\/p>\n
Michelle Wie West is coming out of retirement to play her first tournament since the 2023 U.S. Open. The former wunderkind\u2019s only major victory was at the Open in 2014, and the 36-year-old mother of two used her final year of exemption for a spot in this field.<\/p>\n
Her husband, Jonnie West, will caddy for her at Riviera, while daughter Makenna will be watching.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast time I retired at Pebble Beach, Makenna was 2 and doesn\u2019t really have any memories,\u201d she said. \u201cHopefully being 6 now, she\u2019ll have a lot more memories of being here this week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Nelly Korda fell just short of her first U.S. Women\u2019s Open title a year ago, coming up second to Maja Stark in a finish that was painfully appropriate for her inexplicably winless calendar year. But that disappointment at Erin Hills is a primary reason Korda arrived at venerable Riviera this week … Continue reading Nelly Korda charges into U.S. Women\u2019s Open at Riviera with hunger stoked by last year\u2019s setbacks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1512500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-06 12:50:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1512500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1512501,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512500\/revisions\/1512501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1512500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1512500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1512500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}