Nelly Korda Emerges as Undisputed No. 1 Ahead of Year’s First LPGA Major, While Brooke Henderson Maintains Solid Form

It’s your turn, Nelly Korda. After Scottie Scheffler left his peers in the rear-view mirror with his four-shot Masters victory last week, the golf world turns its attention to the first women’s major of the year, the Chevron Championship.

All eyes will be on Korda, the 25-year-old American who is four-for-four in tournaments won this season. Like Scheffler, who has three wins and a runner-up in his last four starts, Korda has separated herself from the pack as the clear No 1. Should she capture a fifth straight victory this week, she will become a two-time major winner and usurp Scheffler’s as the world’s most dominant golfer at the moment.

Korda will be challenged by the likes of Lydia Ko, a two-time major winner who is back on track after a miserable 2023 campaign, Lilia Vu, the defending champion and the winner of last summer’s AIG Women’s Open, and Patty Tavatanakit, the 2021 Chevron winner who was triumphant in her home country of Thailand in February.

Korda will also have to deal with two Canadians, one a two-time major winner and the other a rookie pro in her first season on the LPGA Tour. Here is a closer look at the play of Brooke Henderson and Savannah Grewal heading into Thursday’s first round.

Brooke Henderson
Although she hasn’t found the winner’s circle since January 2023, Henderson has played some solid golf this season with four top-10 finishes in seven starts. She placed third behind Lydia Ko at the season-opening Tournament of Champions, where she was the defending champion, and tied for third at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore.

At last year’s Chevron Championship, the first played at The Club at Carleton Woods near Houston, Henderson tied for 23rd. The Smiths Falls, Ont., native was in the top 10 through 36 holes last year, but she struggled to rounds of 76-74 on the weekend.

Henderson has been impressive this year. The 26-year-old is fourth in greens in regulation, second in rounds under par and second in total birdies. At 55th, her putting average rank is just behind where it was last year when she was 46th. That was a big improvement over her previous three seasons.

Henderson’s best finish in this event came in 2020 when she was part of a three-way playoff with Korda and Mirim Lee, who pulled off a big upset with a birdie on the first extra hole. That came after Lee chipped in three times in regulation during the final round, once on the finishing hole for eagle. That year’s tournament was played Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif., once the event’s longtime home.

Henderson will play the first two rounds with familiar foes Ko and Lexi Thompson.

Savannah Grewal
Grewal has played four tournaments thus far. She missed the cut in two and tied for 60th in another. Not great. But at the Blue Bay LPGA event in China, Grewal tied for fourth thanks largely to a course-record 8-under 64 in the third round.

That result gained her entry into this week’s major championship as the 22-year-old sits 55th in the yearlong Race to CME Globe points list and sixth in the rookie standings.

Grewal, a Mississauga native and Clemson University alum, turned pro to play in December’s LPGA Q-Series event, where she tied for 10th to earn her 2024 tour card. The Chevron Championship will be her first major start.

She tees off Thursday with a pair of South Korean major champions, Gee Chun and Jiyai Shin. Chun, ranked 58th in the world, has won three majors while Shin, the former world No. 1 who plays primarily in Japan after resigning her LPGA Tour membership in 2014, has won two. Shin did not play in a major from 2020 to 2022, but teed it up in three last year, thing for second in the U.S. Women’s Open and tying for third in the AIG Women’s Open. She is back up to 19th in the world.