Nelly Korda went into the new year with the same outlook as Scottie Scheffler. Both were coming off monster seasons and more willing to look at 2025 as a clean slate instead of an encore.

Korda won seven times last year, including a major, and had a wide gap at No. 1 in the world. She said at the season opener in Florida the last week in January, “Last year is last year.”

“When it comes to defending titles, the field is different. There's different girls in the field. Weather is different. Golf course could be different,” Korda said at the Tournament of Champions. “There are so many variabilities that just completely changes it.”

The biggest change: She has yet to win in 15 tournaments this year, and last month lost the No. 1 ranking to Jeeno Thitikul.

Her statistics are roughly the same — a scoring average of 69.89, compared with 69.56 for all of 2024. She is 20th in putting, up from 34th a year ago. She has taken a significant dip in strokes gained around the green (No. 62 this year, down from No. 4 a year ago).

If there was a category called strokes gained patience, Korda might be leading that.

“I've been putting in a lot of work on every part of my game,” she said two weeks ago in Canada. "Statistically I saw my stats, and seeing that I’m always in the top and some of my stats are maybe better than even last year, it’s just crazy. That’s just golf.

“By this time last year I had six wins under my belt and my stats are better and I have zero wins under my belt this year,” she said. “I think the most important thing is kind of sticking to your process, always trying to be in contention coming into the weekend, and kind of figuring out your groove, too.”

Most alarming of late is getting into contention.

Dating to her runner-up finish in the U.S. Women's Open, Korda has not been closer than seven shots of the winner in seven starts. She was 13 shots (Evian) and 14 shots (Women's British) in the last two majors. She wound up 14 shots behind at the FM Championship last week.

Korda is entered in the Kroger Queen City Championship outside Cincinnati next week.

Ryder Cup qualifying

Lost amid the Ryder Cup captain's picks for Europe and the U.S. over the last week were two players who qualified on their own with limited opportunity: Bryson DeChambeau and Tyrrell Hatton, both with LIV Golf.

DeChambeau earned the sixth and final spot by the equivalent of $ 300,000 while playing only eight times — all of them majors — during the qualifying period. He won the 2024 U.S. Open, was runner-up in the PGA Championship both years and tied for fifth (2025) and sixth (2024) in the Masters.

Ultimately, what earned his spot on the team was recovering from a 78 at Royal Portrush with scores of 65-68-64 to tie for 10th in the British Open.

Hatton played in 10 qualifying events. Only this year's majors count toward the European team and he did his best stuff before they started by winning the Dunhill Links Championship and the Dubai Desert Classic. The majors didn’t hurt — he tied for fourth in the U.S. Open and had top 20s in the Masters and British Open.

Even then, he likely would have been bumped from the top six — and been a captain's pick, anyway — if Sepp Straka did not withdraw from the BMW Championship because of a family matter.

So for LIV players, it can be done. But it takes good golf. Jon Rahm played eight qualifying events and finished 24th in the Ryder Cup standings. He was a captain's pick.

One-sided Walker Cup

The Walker Cup returns to Cypress Point Club for the first time since 1981, and organizers can only hope the competition is as compelling as the scenery.

The Americans are going for their fifth straight victory in the amateur matches that date to 1922 (five years before the Ryder Cup began). That would extend the longest streak since they won eight in a row from 1973 through 1987.

Golf enthusiasts have been arguing for more than a decade whether Great Britain & Ireland should invite amateurs from continental Europe, as the Ryder Cup did in 1979.

GB&I has five players among the top 50 in the world amateur ranking. Continental Europe has four, with Filip Jakubcik of the Czech Republic the highest-ranked non-American at No. 7. Past U.S. Amateur champions from Europe in the last 10 years include Josele Ballester or Spain and Viktor Hovland of Norway.

This might be worthy of discussion if the Americans win again. The two professional cups, Ryder and Solheim, include all of Europe. The two amateur cups, Walker and Curtis, are only for Britain and Ireland.

Long road to Bethpage

Matt Fitzpatrick had reason to be happy about his flight across the Atlantic to his home in Florida. He was chosen for his third straight Ryder Cup team, and he wound up playing a lot of golf to make sure he was part of Team Europe.

Fitzpatrick began to turn his season around when he changed his caddie and his coach, but he didn't earn one of six automatic spots and was not a sure thing as a captain's pick.

He played three straight tournaments on the PGA Tour. And then European captain Luke Donald suggested he play back-to-back weeks at the British Masters in England and the European Masters in Switzerland.

“I had a conversation with Luke and said to him: ‘Listen, I know I’ve been playing well, but I’m thinking that I need to manage my schedule here from an energy standpoint. I might miss British Masters and play Switzerland. It just gives me an extra week of kind of rest,’" he said.

Donald asked him to play the British Masters, and Fitzpatrick obliged.

“That was important to him, and obviously that’s important and that’s something that I want to make sure that I’m doing the right thing as well,” Fitzpatrick said.

He tied for sixth at The Belfry. He finished fifth in Switzerland. He's on the Ryder Cup team.

It was a big climb for Fitzpatrick, who had slipped to No. 85 in the world going into the PGA Championship in May, his best ranking in nearly a year.

Founders Cup

The LPGA Tour has a title sponsor for one of its most important tournaments, the Founders Cup, which celebrates the 13 women who founded the LPGA in 1950.

The Fortinet Founders Cup will be played March 19-22 at Sharon Heights in the San Francisco Bay area. It also marks a return to the Bay for the LPGA, which previously had a tournament at Lake Merced until 2022.

Fortinet, a global cybersecurity firm based in the Silicon Valley, previously was title sponsor of the PGA Tour stop in Napa, California.

It also is the sponsor of the Fortinet Cup, a season race on the PGA Tour Americas.

The Founders Cup began in 2011 and was played the first decade in the Phoenix area before moving to New Jersey for four years with Cognizant as the title sponsor. It was played this year in Bradenton, Florida, without a title sponsor.

Divots

If the Ryder Cup still had 10 qualifiers and two captain’s picks, the only difference in these teams would have been Maverick McNealy (No. 10) earning a spot and Keegan Bradley having to choose two players among Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young and Sam Burns. … Europeans in the Ryder Cup have a combined 148 victories worldwide compared with 95 for the Americans. Counting only PGA Tour events, the Americans have an 81-74 edge. … Jeeno Thitikul is the only player to twice reach No. 1 in the women's world ranking without ever having won a major. Ai Miyazato of Japan was No. 1 for one week in 2010.

Stat of the week

Thirteen of the 24 players in the Ryder Cup won on the PGA Tour this year — seven Americans and six Europeans.

Final word

“Mandarin.” — Viktor Hovland of Norway, when asked during a Golf Channel interview what language he spoke with Ryder Cup partner Ludvig Aberg of Sweden.

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