Mel Reid has lauded the improvement that Nelly Korda has made in her mental game after the world number one won her second major title of the year this past week.
Korda is now a four-time major champion and closing in on completing the Career Grand Slam after her victory at the US Women’s Open at Riviera on Sunday.
Korda made a birdie on the 71st hole to move one shot clear of the likes of Charley Hull and Gaby Lopez. That meant that her par on the last was enough to give her the title.
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Mel Reid praises the improvement Nelly Korda has made to her mental game
Of course, Nelly Korda has now won the first two majors of the season. She also has four victories in total in 2026. That is a remarkable return when you consider that she did not win at all last year.
In fact, Korda only registered one top 10 across the five majors in 2025.
She still has a way to go to catch her tally of seven victories in 2024. However, it seems that Mel Reid believes that she is an even better player than she was two years ago.
Speaking on 5 Clubs, Reid explained how she has taken her game to a completely different level.
“You look back, even two seasons ago, when she won seven times, she missed the cut at the US Women’s Open. She made a 10 we all know on the third hole. Then she missed the cut at Meijer, and then she goes to KPMG, and she was one shot off the lead in round one and then just shot 81, and that was completely and utterly mental, where she was trying to force it, trying to push it,” she said.
“We saw a different player at Chevron. I know she had a six shot lead, but that’s going into the weekend. That’s really hard to kind of go through the weekend with that. You’d almost want it to be one or two shots and in a weird way, I know how she would have felt as a player. So the way that she played that was very disciplined. It was kind of against her own instinct of being aggressive on certain shots, but they stuck to their game plan. I feel like this was the same. If not, it was almost elevated because she was missing greens and she was not getting flustered. Her and Jason were having really nice chats together.
“She just kind of stayed in her own little bubble and that’s something that I feel that Nelly has drastically improved in the last year or so. And it’s not something that data can show, but I kind of saw it at the start of the season. I was like, she just seems different, just an aura around her just seems calmer. She just seems a little bit lighter. And it’s obviously showing tremendously in the best ways this season and she deserves all of it because I actually asked Jess, I said, ‘was that you as well? Like you’re the new coach now’, kind of joking around and she says, no, this is all Nelly. And I think also when you do it on your own and you don’t have an outside influence in whether that be a psychologist or whoever it may be, it gives you this sense of like self-confidence that you can’t get very easily when you do bring other people in.
“It’s a self-trust that you have. Like I’ve done this on my own. It’s a complete ownership. And that’s why we’re seeing a completely different Nelly this season.”
Nelly Korda’s form is all the more incredible following a ridiculous 2025 LPGA season
Korda would have every reason to rip everything up after what happened in the 2025 season.
Statistically, she was better than in 2024 in so many ways. However, she failed to get across the line and land a single win.
What made that all the more surprising was the fact that there were 29 different winners on the LPGA last year. She was not among them.
But Korda kept her faith in what she was doing. And she is now reaping the rewards in stunning fashion.
Korda is back on track in her quest to go down as one of the greatest golfers of all-time. And it should come as no surprise if the US Women’s Open does not prove to be her last major win of the year.
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