[PHOTO: Julio Aguilar]

Nelly Korda is no longer in pain but she’s also not 100 percent healthy. The Annika at Pelican Golf Club is close to her home in Bradenton, Florida, and even though she’s already locked up the LPGA’s Player of the Year honours, it’s not an event she was going to miss.

It was a neck injury that Korda said happened during one of her last practice sessions in September before heading to Asia that kept her from playing any of the four events on the swing. She thinks it was something that had been bothering her for a while and it finally reached its breaking point.

“I was really, really struggling with migraines the week of Solheim and the week after, Cincinnati,” Korda said overnight (Australian time) after playing in the pro-am with WNBA star Caitlin Clark. “The only way it was not hurting was sleeping in a dark room. I think it just led to my injury.”

Korda has won six times this season and is a two-time winner of this week’s event. During her time away from the LPGA during this stretch, she’s gone through rehab and said that she only started playing golf again in the past 10 days.

Swapping jerseys with some of the best 🙌@NellyKorda 🤝 @CaitlinClark22 pic.twitter.com/x7X1e0catu

— LPGA (@LPGA) November 13, 2024

“I really, really wanted to play this week, so in a sense, maybe I rushed my rehab to get to these two events because they were important to me playing in front of a bit of a home crowd here and season championship in Naples,” she said. “Definitely want to be ready for that.

“Not a lot of hours that I’ve gotten to play, but going to take week by week and hopefully be ready for next week as well.”

Next week is the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship and as of now she plans to play in both the Grant Thornton Invitational (which, like the Tour Championship, is also in Naples, Florida) and the PNC Championship with her father Petr in Orlando.