PARIS, France (AFP) — Nelly Korda will start her Olympic women’s golf title defense on Wednesday as the gold-medal favorite despite her brilliant season threatening to come off the rails in recent months.
The world No. 1 arrives at Le Golf National hoping to arrest a sudden downturn in form after smashing records earlier in the year with a run of six wins in seven events.
Korda became the first LPGA Tour player to win six times in a single season since 2016 Olympic champion Park In-bee in 2013 with victory at the Americas Open in May.
The American had previously won five successive titles, including her second major triumph at the Chevron Championship.
But a disaster at the US Open, the lowlight a 10 on a par-three hole, was the first of three straight missed cuts and she could only finish tied-26th at the Evian Championship in July.
“The game of golf is a funny game,” she told reporters on Monday.
“Sometimes you feel on top of the world and in a matter of a couple seconds, you just feel like you’re on the bottom of the sea.”
“So, it definitely makes you appreciate the good golf that you play, but you have to have a mix of everything in there and everything can’t always go well.”
Korda edged out Japan’s Mone Inami and Lydia Ko to win gold by one shot at the Tokyo Games three years ago.
She and sister Jessica followed in the footsteps of their mother, former Czech tennis player Regina Rajchrtova, in becoming Olympians.
Their father Petr Korda, the 1998 Australian Open tennis champion, never played in the Olympics.
Tennis-playing brother Sebastian opted not to compete in Paris and instead won the ATP title in Washington last weekend to reach a career-high ranking of world No. 18.
“We always make fun of the boys because we say that the girls in the Korda family are the only ones that are the Olympians and the boys are not,” Nelly Korda said.
“So, we have that above them in the family.”
Korda will play alongside South Korean star Ko Jin-young and Chinese world number five Yin Ruoning in the first two rounds.
New Zealander Lydia Ko is the only golfer in history with multiple individual Olympic medals, after finishing second to Park in Rio and winning bronze in Tokyo.
She has shown signs of form this season, winning her 20th LPGA Tour title in January.
“I’ve got the most medals both in the women’s and men’s side in golf, so that’s a pretty cool thing to have,” said the former world No. 1.
“If I can leave Paris with another medal, that will be very special to me because you just never know what’s going to happen in the future.”
Ko said her sister has her silver medal and her father the bronze, but she will take them back if she can get on the top step of the podium this weekend.
“If I win the gold, I’m definitely taking all of them back and I’m going to find a way to kind of present all three,” she added.
French hopes will be pinned on 2023 Evian champion Celine Boutier, although she has slipped from third to seventh in the world rankings after a run of 11 tournaments without a top-10 finish.