SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — No. 1 in the Race to the CME Globe. No. 1 in the Rolex Women’s World Rankings. Six wins in 2024. Defending Olympic champion.

You’d think Nelly Korda would be riding into Le Golf National as a virtual lock. But golf, like very nearly all of sports, is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately enterprise. And Korda knows her lately hasn’t been her best. The Olympics could be the return to the form the top player in the women’s game has been looking for, and two weeks of hard work has her pointing to a second gold medal.

“Hopefully, [I’m] trending in the right direction,” Korda said of her pre-tournament preparations ahead of the 72-hole event that begins Wednesday at Le Golf National. Korda is coming into the Olympics on a bit of a stall, having missed three of her last four cuts including at both the U.S. Women’s Open in May and the KPMG Women’s PGA in June. She won six times in the first five months of the year, most recently at the Mizuho Americas Open almost three months ago. While she won the Chevron Championship in April, in addition to missing cuts at two other majors, she is coming off a T-26 at the LPGA’s fourth major, the Amundi Evian Championship three weeks ago.

“I took some time off after Evian and kind of put my clubs to the side for a week, and then grinded for two weeks,” she said of her Olympics lead-in. That includes bringing instructor Jamie Mulligan with her this week to Paris. “He’s always really nice to be around and keeps it super light.”

Korda likes to keep her distractions to a minimum, but she’s enjoyed the time at the Olympics as a spectator, including watching swimmer Katie Ledecky win the 800-meter freestyle, her second gold at these games and her ninth overall.

“That was really exciting,” she said. “That’s something that I watched as a kid so getting to do that in person was definitely a bucket-list thing. … Obviously we have five majors a year, and they train four years for one shot. And that’s what makes track and field, swimming, gymnastics, all those sports so amazing because they train four years to live out their dream, and we have five times a year to live out our dream. It’s absolutely incredible, and it makes me appreciate what they do that much more.”

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That perspective applies to her own game and her current trendline, Korda said. “The game of golf of is a funny game,” she said. “Sometimes you feel on top of the world and in a matter of a couple seconds, you just feel like you’re on the bottom of the sea. So it definitely makes you appreciate the good golf that you play, but yeah, I mean, you have to have a mix of everything in there and everything can’t always go well.

“I would say I’m very grateful for the ups as much as I am for the downs. I think that’s helped me mature and made me realize how grateful I am to do this for a living. You can either shatter, or you can rise and grow from the opportunities and ride the roller coaster that life throws at you.”

Nelly Korda knows what it takes to grab gold after her victory at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

Mike Ehrmann

If you close your eyes, there’s a similar, measured tone in Korda’s words to another No. 1 in the world who came into these games having failed in his previous three major appearances. Scottie Scheffler turned the Olympics into his seventh win of the year and reasserted his position as the game’s best player. Korda would like to do the same, but just like Scheffler she isn’t sweating it. She knows her Olympic victory in Tokyo was a monumental achievement in her career and an emotional moment, and she even pointed out that her heart-rate readout was the highest not when she holed the winning putt, but when she was on the medal stand.

“When it comes to majors and an Olympic medal, that’s the reason why we are out there so long and grinding and pushing ourselves in the gym and on the golf course is for those moments,” she said.

“I have gone through many, many situations where I played really bad and then all of a sudden, if I just continue working hard, and doing what I need to do, the results show after,” she said. “If I’m making little improvements here and there, and I’m happy with the way my game is trending, at the end of the day, I know that I have what it takes to compete and to contend.”

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com