PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. \u2014 Most weeks we have no clue who will win. The oddsmakers list their educated guesses, but it\u2019s all based on single-digit percentages. But some weeks, the storylines coalesce around a single character. At the U.S. Women\u2019s Open, that\u2019s Nelly Korda.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The question Korda faces Sunday is the same one she faced Thursday morning when she played her first hole. It\u2019s the same one she faced Tuesday morning when she gave her pre-tournament press conference. It\u2019s very simple:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Are you able to summon a victory the one week you need it the most?<\/p>\n
Why does she need this one most? Because form isn\u2019t forever. Because she\u2019s playing the best golf of her life. Because she\u2019s won a Gold medal but never her national championship. Because the next U.S. Women\u2019s Open at historic Riviera isn\u2019t on the calendar and these moments can pass by quickly if you don\u2019t stamp your name all over them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For more than 10 years<\/a>, Rory McIlroy failed to get the job done at Augusta National, and stayed one victory shy of the career Grand Slam. Then the dam broke. He\u2019s now won there twice in a row.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lydia Ko could just accept the podium at the 2024 Olympics. She needed to be on top of the podium at the Paris Games, to not only join the LPGA Hall of Fame, but to polish off the medal slam. Silver in 2016, Bronze in 2021, it was Gold or nothing in 2024. She won the Gold<\/a>. Then she won at St. Andrews a couple weeks later.\u00a0<\/p>\n Scottie Scheffler will have (it seems) a bunch more chances to win the U.S. Open, starting in two weeks at Shinnecock \u2014 in order to claim his career Grand Slam \u2014 but until he does it, we\u2019ll be wondering, can he do it? When he\u2019ll do it. IF he can do it.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s how it goes with the game\u2019s best players. They go through valleys and reach peaks all the time. It comes and goes and they understand that. But when the golf is great, how great can it be? These are the questions we ask. In press conferences, in clubhouses and in Hall of Fame speeches 20 years from now. How memorable will this stretch of Nelly Korda golf be? It starts Sunday afternoon, in a position not too dissimilar from where we were 12 months ago.<\/p>\n