After Solheim Cup win, Nelly Korda gets back to business and needles teammates: ‘Just hate all the girls again’
The top-ranked player in the Americans’ Solheim Cup win couldn’t stay at Sunday night’s victory party for long. Following a 3-1-0 week, Nelly Korda was among the first to leave the adrenaline-fueled celebration for the team’s first win in seven years. The 26-year-old’s mind was out of the team room and onto the next event—this week’s Kroger Queen City Championship. If Korda didn’t make her 10:30 p.m. bedtime, she was concerned about being exhausted for Cincinnati.
That “let’s move on” focus was apparent in the World No. 1’s pre-tournament press conference Wednesday when she got in a sly joke on getting back to business while reflecting on her appreciation for her Solheim Cup teammates.
“Just hate all the girls again,” Korda said to laughter.
“It’s crazy,” she added more seriously, “the friendships that you do make during Solheim Cup when you guys are all on one team.”
Korda needed to salvage whatever energy she could after a week of 4:30 a.m. bus rides to Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, where she got to know better Solheim Cup standout rookies Sarah Schmelzel and Lauren Coughlin, as well as Rose Zhang, her young rival who went undefeated against Europe.