Women's Golf Olympic Games Preview 2024
By: Derek Clements | Mon 29 Jul 2024
NELLY KORDA will be a warm favourite to retain her Olympic title at Le Golf National and will feel she has a point to prove after some disappointing performances in the women’s majors in 2024.
Early in the year she swept all before her.
Korda won her ninth LPGA Tour event in January at the Drive On Championship. She then won three straight events in March and April, the Seri Bak Championship, the Ford Championship and the T-Mobile Matchplay. Her four straight wins in four starts made her the first player to do so since Lorena Ochoa in 2008.
Korda continued her incredible start to the year with a fifth consecutive victory, and her second major title, at the Chevron, scoring a 275 (−13, 68-69-69-69) beating Sweden’s Maja Stark by two strokes. Only Annika Sorenstam and Nancy Lopez had won five consecutive starts before Korda became the third LPGA player to achieve the feat.
She withdrew from the next tournament the day after her fifth consecutive victory, saying she needed to rest. In May 2024, Korda won the Mizuho Americans Open, her sixth win in seven starts. She shot 14 under par, edging out Hannah Green of Australia.
As good as all of this was, she missed the cut at the US Open and Women’s PGA and finished a lowly tied 26th at The Evian Championship - these were three majors at which she started as favourite.
Olympic Games Golf 2021
In 2021 in Tokyo Nelly Korda made it a clean sweep of gold medals in golf for America, holding on for a one-shot victory in a thrill-a-minute finish to the Olympic women’s golf competition.
Korda led by three at one point on the back nine. In the end, she needed two putts from just inside 30 feet on the 18th hole for par and a 2-under 69.
Mone Inami of Japan made bogey from a plugged lie in the bunker on the 18th hole and faced a playoff against Lydia Ko of New Zealand for the silver medal. For the 23-year-old Korda, it was another wonderful moment in a dream season that saw her win four times, including her first major and reach the top of the world rankings for the first time.
Olympic Games Golf Preview 2024
This time Korda will be partnered by Lillia Vu, while Charley Hull and Georgia Hall represent Great Britain, Celine Boutier and Perrine Delacour go for France, Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow represent Ireland, Maja Stark and Linn Grant represent Sweden, Japan by Yamashita Miyu and Saso Yuka and Denmark by Emily Kristine Pedersen and Nanna Koerstz Madsen.
All eyes will, of course be on Korda and Vu in the field of 60 but my money is going on Maja Stark and Linn Grant. Stark is one of the most exciting talents in the women’s game. She knows only one way to play the game - and that is to attack every single flag. When it comes off she is capable of shooting the lights out.
Le Golf National is fraught with danger and she may have to rein it in a little. And in Grant she has one of the best prospects in the sport as a teammate. Grant has been a winning machine since turning professional.
In October 2021 she won her first tournament as a professional, the Terre Blanche Ladies Open. In December, she earned her LPGA Tour card at final qualifying. In February 2022, Grant won two titles on the Sunshine Ladies Tour in South Africa. And in March, she won her firstLadies European Tour title at the co-sanctioned the Joburg Ladies Open. After a tie for 7th at the season-ending South African Women’s Open she captured the Sunshine Ladies Tour's Order of Merit title, ahead of Lee-Anne Pace.
In June 2022, Grant became the first woman to win on the DP World Tour, by winning the Volvo Scandinavian Mixed in Sweden, a tournament with a field mixed of 78 women and 78 men, playing from different tees for the same title and the same prize money, but divided when counting for the women on the Ladies European Tour and for the men on the European Tour. Grant went into the final round with a two-shot lead, and went on to score an 8-under-par 64 in the last round, and to win by nine strokes ahead of the nearest man and 14 strokes ahead of the nearest woman.
After finishing runner-up in 2020 and 2021, Grant won the 2022 Skafto Open.
Grant played only six events in her rookie season on the LPGA Tour in 2022, enjoying four top-10 finishes in the process. Although accumulating enough points to qualify for the Tour Championship, she did not play because of Covid travel restrictions.
In May 2023, travel restrictions to enter the U.S. were eased. In only her fourth start she won the Dana Open.
In June 2024, Grant won on the Scandinavian Mixed for a second time, after starting the final day 11 shots behind 54-hole leader Sebastian Soderberg, achieving the biggest comeback ever in a professional golf tournament.
It is an impressive body of work and is why I tip her to win the gold medal.
Form Guide
Nelly Korda will be expected to successfully defend her Olympic title but Linn Grant is fresh from beating many of Europe’s best male golfers and just cannot stop winning golf tournaments
To win:
Linn Grant. Fabulous talent
Each way:
Nelly Korda. Defending champion
Each way:
Lydia Ko. Desperate to add gold to her collection
Five Players To Follow
Linn Grant. On the crest of a wave
Nelly Korda. Having a memorable year
Lydia Ko. Loves the Olympics
Maja Stark. Win or bust
Charley Hull. Great fun to watch
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Tags: Womens Golf Olympic Games lpga
