A happy, healthy Nelly Korda has won 3 straight LPGA starts and is playing the best golf of her career

Here comes a healthy Nelly Korda. Her dominant bogey-free 65 Sunday to win the Ford Championship at 20 under par earned the World No. 1 her third consecutive LPGA victory. The run includes a seven-week gap between wins at the LPGA Drive On Championship in January and last week’s Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship.

Korda’s 11th career title adds her name to a list of some of the LPGA’s all-time greats. The 25-year-old is the first American to win three consecutive events since Nancy Lopez in 1978. She is the first American to win three tournaments before April since Joanne Carner in 1980. And Korda has only made four starts this year, her first fully healthy campaign since 2021.

“To get three in a row, that’s just a dream come true,” Korda said. Korda battled injuries in three of her previous four seasons, nearly half of her LPGA career. She withdrew from the 2020 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship after injuring her back and did not play for two months. She had surgery on a blood clot in 2022, taking six months to fully recover. Last May, Korda missed a month with a lower back injury.

In 2021, however, when Korda was healthy, she was dominant. The Bradenton, Fla., native won four times that year, including the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and the Olympic gold medal.