LPGA Star Nelly Korda is on top of the world once again. The 27 year old American went wire to wire at the Chevron Championship to capture the 3rd Major championship of her career and regain the world number 1 ranking on Sunday.
Korda began the day with a 5 shot lead at Memorial Park, and closed out a 2 under round of 70 to claim the 17th LPGA victory of her career, and 21st worldwide. No other competitor was able to get closer than 4 strokes off Korda’s mark, cementing her dominant performance over the weekend.
For her efforts, the new world number 1 will pocket $1.35M from the $9M tournament purse. LPGA officials announced earlier this week that the total prize money was increasing by $1M over the 2025 figure. Since Chevron took over as the title sponsor of the event in 2022, the purse has nearly doubled from the original $5.9M available to competitors.
That being said, even with the increase in prize money, the Chevron still trails behind the U.S. Women’s Open (both of which had purses of over $12M in 2025). The AIG Women’s Open ($9.75M) and Amundi Evian Championship ($8M) each had larger total prize money available prior to 2026 as well.
For Korda’s part, she’s likely happy to be exiting the runner’s up circle after finishing in second place at the Fortinet Founders Cup, Ford Championship, and Aramco Championship in her last 3 starts. Prior to that, she took home 1st place at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in January.
All in all, she’s finished no lower than a tie for 2nd place in any of her 5 starts on tour this season, earning her an absurd amount of CME points to date when compared to the rest of the field.
With the LPGA Tour’s first major of the season now in the books, golfers will head to El Cameleon Golf Club on April 30th for the Riviera Maya Open.
Photo: Keith Allison. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.