Women’s golf finally has the player it long needed.
Nelly Korda, a 25-year-old American with an endearing personality, has taken over the LPGA Tour. After winning the Chevron Championship, her second major victory, Korda now has won five tournaments in a row to take a commanding place as the best women’s golfer in the world.
Similar to Scottie Scheffler in the men’s game, Korda is simply on another level compared to her competition. She even got the bad end of the draw for the first two rounds this past week in Houston, but it didn’t matter. Korda is first in Strokes Gained tee to green and second in Strokes Gained around the green, which is eerily in near lockstep with Scheffler.
How are you supposed to beat that? Apparently, for the moment, you don’t.
As a big U.S.-born fan of the women’s game, I used to pine for days when an American woman dominated. I grew up watching Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa, among other greats, who brought significant attention to the LPGA Tour—but we always lacked a supernova talent from the U.S.
Lexi Thompson and Michelle Wie were (are) popular but didn’t fully realize their potential on the course for a variety of reasons. Fair or unfair, those two inspired fans to care in a way that international players just haven’t been able to do for the American golf audience.
The LPGA Tour has become a lot deeper over time in terms of competition and the last handful of years has seen remarkable parity. Since 2017, there have been 19 players who won their first major and have yet to follow it up with a second major. The biggest names on that list are Danielle Kang, Jennifer Kupcho and Georgia Hall—good players with nice careers but not superstars.
That parity hasn’t been a positive thing if you look at TV ratings and engagement. It’s hard to get emotionally invested in players if it is a constant revolving door, especially when there are five majors during a season and nobody seems to be grabbing them in multiples.
That could change now.
Korda has 13 LPGA Tour wins and is going into the summer as the most dominant force—at least in a short time span—we’ve seen in women’s golf since Annika. Granted, Sorenstam won 48 times between 2000 to 2006, eventually capturing 10 majors for her career, so Korda is a long way off from establishing that kind of record.
Still, she is the youngest American since Juli Inkster (1984) to win two majors. During her five consecutive wins, she is beating the field by 3.6 strokes per round, a mind-boggling stat. Only Sorenstam and Nancy Lopez have ever won five straight events.
Korda is phenomenal for women’s golf and there has already been substantial progress made because of her growing stature. From popular podcasts, to social media videos, to a five-minute SportsCenter interview last week, the TaylorMade golfer has put in a monumental effort to promote the game.
“She’s kind of our Caitlin Clark out here,” said two-time major winner Lilia Vu, referencing the University of Iowa point guard who captured the country’s imagination the past couple of years during the women’s NCAA basketball tournament.
Clark, who was recently selected No. 1 in the WNBA draft, brought eyeballs to women’s basketball as record audiences tuned in the past two years. The championship game between Iowa and South Carolina peaked at a ridiculous 24 million viewers and averaged 18.7 million during the Gamecocks’ win.
That beat the finale of the men’s basketball tournament (14.82 million viewers), a feat which felt impossible only a few years ago.
Korda deserves that same type of attention. I know college sports come with a built-in passionate fan base—and it’s different watching a player dominate in a game that is so outwardly athletic—but Korda has the personality and immense talent to match Clark, a force of nature who is going on Saturday Night Live and reportedly signing a major deal with NIKE.
So why isn’t Korda right there alongside Clark in terms of popularity? Why doesn’t this feel the same?
In my opinion, what has held Korda back from approaching those heights is that the LPGA suffers from being a poor TV product with minimal shoulder programming around the competition.
I’ve written at length about the PGA Tour’s struggles on TV, but the LPGA is truly treated as a third-rate product that often gets bumped in priority by the PGA Tour Champions (I’ve yet to meet a single person who watches the senior men play on TV. Attending an event in your hometown? Sure. Watching on TV? I think even LIV has more of an audience).
The reality is that LPGA Tour viewership, while increasing, is still so far behind where it could be. Just breaking the one million viewers mark, which happened a few times last season, was cause for celebration. Last July was the most-watched month of LPGA Tour golf ever, according to a Sports Business Journal report. Purses are up to $123.25 million this year (they were $85.7 million last year) and the “total media consumption” metric is at 11.5 million per week this year, up from four million last year.
There is still a lot missing.
Sunday should have been a massive TV moment for the women’s game where at least a few million people watched but the viewing experience was terrible. While the final groups of the Chevron Championship needed six hours to play the final round, NBC only had a few cameras out on the course—the whole broadcast was a total slog.
It did not feel like a major. The graphics, the camera angles, the context needed to fully absorb what was a historic moment—none of it came anywhere close to matching Korda’s performance.
NBC/Comcast has not invested in women’s golf. They are offering bare-bones coverage of women’s majors. The LPGA Tour is in such a state that they are paying ESPN+ (and not the other way around) to bolster programming at certain events (this past week was the first LPGA event of the year where ESPN+ streamed women’s golf. Six events will be covered on ESPN+ over the course of two seasons).
All of this is in direct contrast to women’s basketball. ESPN has been steadily investing in women’s basketball for years, adding shoulder programming, a more robust selection show and other elements to get people interested. The coverage of March Madness on the men’s and women’s sides looks more and more similar every year.
Clark didn’t bring fans in by herself. This “moment” in women’s sports didn’t happen overnight.
The main difference between Clark and Korda is that the structure and investment of coverage in their respective sports is miles apart. NBC/Comcast was handed a perfect script for a young, affable American woman to win a major championship during a dominant run—and they treated it more like a Korn Ferry Tour event than a major of outstanding importance. This has been happening repeatedly, including several recent instances where poor TV windows cut viewers off from consuming LPGA Tour golf.
Sadly, the LPGA Tour’s TV contract with NBC is tied to the PGA Tour’s TV contract which runs to 2030.
Perhaps there is hope that, as women’s sports continue to grow, more of an effort will be made. The cost of rights for the LPGA Tour is significantly cheaper than rights for the PGA Tour so the opportunity is there for a network to invest and, potentially, even come out with a profit. NBC/Contrast signed these deals. They should have a responsibility to try everything they can to promote the women’s game.
Where does someone go to hear knowledgeable people talk about women’s golf? There is some programming out there but we need way more so golf lovers can establish emotional connections to players. I know the LPGA Tour is working on this—they’ve added several employees to help create more content.
It doesn’t help the TV situation, however, which is huge shame. It makes me livid, to be honest.
Women’s golf is interesting and more relatable for recreational golfers. And the excuse of not watching because the game is dominated by unrecognizable players doesn’t fly anymore.
Korda is that superstar we’ve been waiting for.
But until the TV product gets better, the women’s game—and Korda—won’t capture imaginations like we should be seeing.
Dave H.
6 days ago
Quite a few comments here about sub-par talking heads, which is true. But the #1 reason the LPGA does not get big ratings vs. hoops, Nelly or not, is that most people that don’t play golf don’t watch it. I only played pick-hoops (in my earlier days) but love to watch college games (men & women), especially during March Madness. And if LIV becomes a part of the tour, you can bet ratings will go down even more.