Nelly Korda and New Zealand’s Lydia Ko are tied atop the leaderboard after one round of the LPGA Drive On Championship on Thursday in Bradenton, Florida.
Korda and Ko shot 6-under 65s at Bradenton Country Club, good for a 1-stroke lead over Denmark’s Nanna Koerstz Madsen.
Korda, a Bradenton native, is seeking her first LPGA victory since November 2022, while Ko could win her third straight outing. Ko won last week’s season opener, the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, along with December’s mixed-team exhibition (with Australian Jason Day), the Grant Thornton Invitational.
“Definitely nice to be able to win the first event of the year, especially because you don’t have anything really to reference your round off or your game,” Ko said. “Grant Thornton was only five weeks ago, but that’s a completely different format, and so wasn’t like I was coming in with a ton of like really good momentum.
“But just trying to feed off what was going well last week, and overall I thought I played really solid.”