To play off a phrase from the old Dos Equis beer commercials, I don’t write much about the LPGA Tour – we’ve got the incomparable Beth Ann Nichols for that – but when I do, it’s for something special.
But seeing 24-year-old Nelly Korda win the Pelican Championship on Sunday and return to World No. 1 just eight months after a life-threatening blood clot attempted to derail her season, if not a lot more, qualifies as something special in my book.
Her swing instructor Jamie Mulligan, who also works with sister Jessica, detailed what happened to Nelly in March in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, where she was doing an instruction shoot for another publication.
“The next day, it rained during the Players Championship and we were hanging out at the house where we were staying. Patrick’s (Cantlay) physio David Sunderland was working on the girls and Patrick. I was upstairs working and David came upstairs and said, ‘Hey, there’s something the matter with Nelly.’ And I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ He goes, ‘I can’t really put my finger on it.’ A little while later I called Nelly to see how she was doing, and Nelly’s not usually emotional and she was sounding emotional and she said, ‘My hands are turning weird colors.’ And I said, ‘Give me a minute, and I hung up.’ I called (PGA Tour Commissioner) Jay Monahan, who’s my longtime friend, and he opened with ‘Hey, I heard that Nelly was in town.’ I said, ‘That’s why I’m calling you. We have a problem. I think she might have a blood clot and I need your help. He called in the cavalry and he helped us so she immediately got to see a doctor and then they ended up doing a procedure, but Jay was a catalyst on that and it was really, really cool that he did that.”
Mulligan said the procedure was supposed to last 45 minutes and it ended up taking almost three hours.
“It was scary,” he said. “You know, it was two centimeters from her heart. I mean, she could’ve died.”
Mulligan could see a victory on the LPGA Tour brewing for Nelly. She had won the individual title in August at the Aramco Team Series – Sotogrande by three shots.
“She’s been trending the right way and it was getting a little better and she worked really hard the last couple of weeks,” said Mulligan, the 2021 PGA Teacher and Coach of the Year and CEO of Virginia Country Club in Long Beach, California. “Given all she’s been through and to get back to World No. 1, I think it is more impressive than probably the year before when she won four times and the gold medal.”
Most of Mulligan’s students are homegrown products, such as Cantlay. For all his coaching prowess, Mulligan has been reluctant to take on new clients, particularly players that already had made the big time. But he let it be known that he was a fan of the Korda sisters – Jessica’s swing already was mechanically one of the best he’s ever seen and he marvels at how Nelly creates effortless power. If he were to make an exception, it would be with someone like the Kordas.
Cantlay’s fiancée Nikki Guidish is good friends with the Korda sisters and once they got wind of Mulligan’s crush, they ended up meeting and one thing led to another. They went “Facebook official” about a year ago.
Women’s golf has been waiting for a global superstar, specifically an American player who could lift the game to new heights. Nelly has the potential to fill that role.
“She’s it,” said Mulligan, who coached World Golf Hall of Famer Amy Alcott and has been teaching golf for four decades. “She’s like almost nothing I’ve ever seen before. She’s got it all. She has the ability to make a hard sport look easy. As far as like the ability to match mechanics and tempo and mind over body over spirit and being like driven to be a great player, she’s a unicorn, you know.”
A rare and special talent, indeed.
