World No. 2 Nelly Korda has put herself in position to run away with the Chevron Championship.

Korda, playing in the morning wave of the LPGA’s first major of the year, shot a second straight seven-under-par 65 on Friday and led the field by seven shots when she finished at Memorial Park Golf Course. At one point, she led by eight shots, and at 14- under 130, she opened up a huge gap with the lowest 36-hole score ever in a women’s major outside of the Amundi Evian Championship.

Almost can't get better than this

Nelly sticks the dart on 18 and gives herself a good look at a closing birdie pic.twitter.com/Qxg9N4qs8a

— LPGA (@LPGA) April 24, 2026

Korda has played impressive golf all season, and she’s continued that here, but there’s still 36 holes to play.

“I would say what’s challenging about playing with the lead is you have a target on your back in a sense, but also enjoy it. I enjoy golf,” Korda said. “I think this year I just wanted to have a different mindset change of, if I get into trouble, I’ll figure it out. Not like you look at something and—excuse my French—say I’m [screwed].

“… So that’s my biggest takeaway from last year and the years before. I don’t want to have that mindset. I want to be like, ‘OK, I’ll figure it out and not stress myself out too much.’”

She hasn’t been in much trouble. On Friday, she hit 11 of 13 fairways and 14 of 18 greens. She needed 27 putts, a day after just 24.

“Overall, really happy with today. Started a little bit slower, two under on the front. But it was nice to make a birdie on nine to kind of get it going into the back nine,” Korda said. “Back nine is definitely a little tougher overall than the front nine, so I was hitting it really well and I’m just capitalising on really good shots.”

Korda is capitalising on the par 5s, as well, shooting seven under for two rounds on them. That has her on pace to eclipse her performances on the longest holes in her other two major wins. She scored 11 under on the par 5s in capturing the 2021 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and 10 under in the 2024 Chevron. She’ll have 10 more tries on the course’s five par 5s over the weekend.

Memorial Park is rewarding long, accurate hitters and anyone who is going to come from behind is going to have to take advantage of the par 5s as well.

Korda’s lead is so big that her performance is being compared to Rory McIlroy’s in the recent Masters. He had a record six-shot lead after 36 holes, but a third-round 73 left him in a tie at the top with Cameron Young, who shot 65, heading into the final round. McIlroy would lose his lead on Sunday, but rallied on the back nine to win his second straight Masters.

The point is, nothing is guaranteed, though Memorial Park doesn’t have the kind of pitfalls of Augusta National. There are few bunkers or water hazards, and the rough is manageable.

Amateur Farah O’Keefe, a University of Texas golfer who was tied for second after her morning round of 69, talked to her caddie about trying to find a way.

“I told Bentley [Cotton], I compared it to Rory at the Masters,” O’Keefe said. “Really, you never know what can happen in golf. There is so much that’s random out there that you can get a bad break and it’s just kind of that thing. My dad and I say that golf is a staring contest and all you have to do is not blink first. So I’m just trying not to blink.”

O’Keefe was tied for second, seven shots back, after the morning with veteran Ryann O’Toole (68). The largest 36-hole lead in a major history is eight shots, which was done three times—the last being Mickey Wright in the 1961 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

Korda won the season-opening Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, which was shortened by the LPGA Tour to 54 holes due to weather. Korda finished second her next three events, and now she has this big lead. This feels very similar to her 2024 season when she won seven tournaments and a record-tying five consecutive.

“I just feel really good,” Korda said. “I’m just hitting it in the spots that I want to, missing it into the spots that I want to. The communication between [Jason] and I is really good, where if there is a tucked pin and it’s kind of stupid, I would rather give myself a longer lag putt and give myself the best opportunity for par. That’s kind of the way we been playing the past two days, not taking any kind of stupid risks. We’re going to go after the ones we can and where we have to play back and miss in the right spots, that’s kind of what I’m doing. I think overall everything is really flowing.”

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The public course has been home to the PGA Tour’s Texas Children’s Open since 2020, and Gary Woodland scored an emotional victory here last month. But there will certainly be differences to how it plays for the women compared to the men, and the rainy weather that drenched the course early in the week will be a contributing factor, too.

World No. 5 Hannah Green, who has won four worldwide tournaments this season and won captured last week’s JM Eagle LA Championship, is getting some valuable help on her bag this week from from her caddie, David Buhai, who looped for Karl Vilips during the PGA Tour event.

Moriya Jutanugarn plays a shot from the bunker on the 10th hole during the practice round of the Chevron Championship. Kenneth Richmond

“It’s playing tough. It’s playing quite long. Obviously, this rain is not really helping either, making things a little bit more difficult for us,” Green said. “I think it definitely feels like a major championship course. I hope fairways can at least firm up. I don’t know if that will happen, but it will be interesting to see how they put the tee positions because some of the holes, depending on pin locations, could be quite tough.”

The LPGA lists the course yardage for the week at 6,811 yards—or more than 660 yards shorter than it was maxed out for the men. But in neither case do they usually play the full yardage of the layout in any one round, and the LPGA also has the par set at 72, rather than the 70 for the PGA Tour. Two holes have been changed from par 4 to par 5—the 533-yard first and 529-yard 14th.

Minjee Lee is another player figuring to have some inside knowledge, considering that her brother, Min Woo Lee, won in Houston last year and tied for third last month.

Some players, such as World No. 2 Nelly Korda, like to go with their own assessment of the course.

“No, I did not talk to any PGA Tour players. I didn’t watch too much of the (PGA Tour] event. We were playing that week, so it was quite hard to watch and also compete,” Korda said. “But I know that my caddie, Jason [McDede], did. I like to suss out a golf course myself and make my decision myself than relying on someone else’s input. Then I have too much information in my mind and I feel like then if I have their information versus what I scope out on the golf course, I start to doubt my information and then I’m not 100% confident in what I’m doing.”

She added, “That’s why I tend to not always ask for too much information about another golf course, especially from a male to a female, because they have different clubs coming in, the apex of the ball flight is a lot higher than ours. Just from what I was told though is that it is kind of like a bomber’s paradise. You’re trying to hit driver on every hole pretty much, get it as close to the green, because it is very sectional and it’s crucial to have probably shorter clubs into these greens when it is firm.”

Weather-wise, there’s good and bad news for the field when the tournament begins on Thursday. The current potential for rain is low, but temperatures are supposed to climb into the mid-80s, with Houston’s usual accompaniment of stifling humidity.

“I grew up in Texas, so I feel like April showers, we just get them. It happens,” said amateur Farah O’Keefe, who is from Austin. “But I think like the weather and everything has kind of softened up the course a lot. We had a lot of mud balls [Wednesday], so I think that will probably be something to be expected for the tournament.”

O’Keefe is one of eight amateurs playing in the major and it’s her first start in the Chevron Championship. But because this is a new course for the LPGA, it’s a level playing field for everyone.

“It’s a very interesting course,” said Lindy Duncan, who was in the five-woman playoff at The Club at Carlton Woods last year, losing to eventual winner Mao Saigo. “There is a lot to the green complexes and if you hit your approach shots good you can have some good chances. But it’s going to be playing super long, so it’ll be tough.”

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