GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — With a score of 25-under par over four days at Blythefield Country Club, Nelly Korda has won the Meijer LPGA Classic for Simply Give.
"Hopefully everyone was entertained, I was entertained, pretty stressed out too though actually," Korda laughed after the round.
The 22-year-old Bradenton, Fla., resident took home her fifth career LPGA victory on Sunday.
Korda is the first player with multiple wins on the LPGA tour in the 2021 season, as she also won the 2021 Gainbridge Championship in late February.
Her win wouldn't go without some drama in the later holes of the round, including on the sixteenth when Korda would bogie, while Ireland's Leona Maguire would birdie, cutting the lead to just one stroke.
"Some days you get more aggravated, some days you're okay with mistakes," Korda added, "today, fortunately I was okay with the mistakes, I knew there was still a lot of golf out there."
Korda and Maguire would both par the par 4 seventeenth hole as they entered the eighteenth just one stroke apart.
On the par 5 eighteenth, Korda's second shot would end up left of the green into the rough.
"Right as I hit I was like 'oh no'," she laughed, "I didn't even have a good lie honestly, one foot was in the bunker, and I had to grip down on the shaft, I got myself into a birdie opportunity."
Korda would recover beautifully and would tap in for birdie and the victory.
Korda's 72-hole score sets the record for the best score ever recorded since the Classic's inception in 2014.
"If you told me at the US Open that I was going to shoot 25-under, I would have said yeah right," she added, "but I did a good bit of work back home, my dad was at every practice."
Following the win, tournament officials announced a donation of $1.1 million to the retailer’s Simply Give program, as well as a $25,000 donation to a hunger relief program in a town of Korda’s choice.
Korda chose to keep the donation in Grand Rapids.
"I knew I wanted to do something with kids, I love kids and I also knew I wanted to keep it here in Grand Rapids," Korda said after the win.
With the win, Korda earns $345,000 in prize money. She has earned $1.1 million this season and $4.8 million in her career on the LPGA.
