With six victories in her last seven appearances, six of them consecutively, Nelly Korda is not only by far the best golf player of the moment, Number One of the Rolex Rankings with a very comfortable lead, but she presents herself week after week as the great favourite to win no matter what tournament she plays. This will be the case again this Thursday, when she tees off at hole 1 of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, to compete in the US Women’s Open. But before that, as if it were nothing, she has revealed her secret Coca Cola formula for success. Or in other words, one of the reasons why she believes her career has reached this stratospheric level of play.
During her press conference prior to the USGA major, the American golfer referred to the decision she made for her coaches to accompany her to the tournaments, something that is not usually common in the world of golf, except at specific events or at specific times of the season. “I’ve had Jamie or Brett here almost every week. The only week I didn’t have anyone was during Cognizant, and that week I wasn’t very accurate. Making sure that my team also dedicates time to me and that we all dedicate ourselves to each other has been the biggest change this year because at all the competitions I have attended and played, I have had a coach”.
“Jamie, Brett, my whole team and I talked last year about needing them to come to more events and it’s helping me a lot”
Nelly is managing to abstract herself from everything that being the player of the moment entails. And she does so also thanks to her trusted people: “Yes, I have to say that it is my team that surrounds me that keeps me in my bubble. We all know that we are here doing what we love. We all have the same goals in mind, and we are trying to achieve one thing, and that is hopefully to lift the trophy at the end of the week”.
But this, as we say, has not always been the case… In fact, Korda has explained that, before this spectacular streak of titles, she rarely had any of her swing coaches at the tournaments. A presence that, without a doubt, has helped her to solve problems that may have arisen during the competition: “I rarely had a coach here with me last year and the previous years, and I love the fact of having one here now, because before, if I was not hitting well… It’s different to have someone here than to face them and try to figure it out on your own”.
“Actually, having that face-to-face conversation and having them put you in that position and feel it, because feeling versus real is very, very different. What I think I do is usually the opposite, so having someone here has helped me a lot. Jamie, Brett, my whole team and I talked last year about needing them to come to more events”, guarantees the great favourite to this US Women’s Open, who has found in the presence of one of her coaches at the tournaments her secret Coca Cola formula for success.
