For the First Time in 22 Years, Nelly Korda Succeeds in Breaking Barriers With the Help of LPGA Phenom Lexi Thompson

The QBE Shootout is a 24-player unofficial PGA Tour event. This year’s event will mark the 34th QBE shootout. It will be held at the Tiburón Golf Club at The Ritz-Carlton Resort, Naples, in December. The Shootout is a 3-day, 54-hole stroke play event in which teams of two compete. For the first time since the event began in 1989, there will be two women from the LPGA on the player list: Lexi Thompson and Nelly Korda.

Korda and Thompson rank, respectively, in 4th and 7th place in the Women’s Global Golf Ranking. They will be competing against 22 of the world’s best golfers. This includes six of the top 30 and 10 of the top 50 ranked men’s players. Many stars golfers like Billy Horschel, PGA Tour Rookie of the Year Cameron Young, Tom Hoge, K.H. Lee, Brian Harman, and Harris English.

The QBE shootout format

The QBE Shootout follows a three-round: scramble, modified alternate shot, and four ball, format. The total purse for the event is $3.8 million, which will split among the top nine teams. In the scramble, each player hits a drive, and the best drive is selected. Following this, each player plays a second shot, with the best being selected again. This repeats until the ball holes out.

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In the second round, each player again hits a drive, and the best drive is selected. The remaining players, i.e., those whose drive is not selected, hit the second shot, and so on until the ball is holed. In the final round of four ball, each player plays his or her ball until it’s holed out. The team score for that hole is that of the player with the lowest score.

This format is not very similar to the regular tournament formats played on the LPGA Tour, and hence may prove to be a challenge to Nelly Korda. The 24-year-old already has one major and an Olympic gold medal, which makes her list of accomplishments better than most. Can she go on to crack the QBE shootout as well and add another trophy to her list of achievements.

Nelly Korda makes her debut at the QBE Shootout in Naples

Of both the women American golfers, Thompson has been a part of and played in the QBE Shootout five times already. Nelly Korda, who ranked number 1 in January of this year, will be making her debut in the tournament. Both Thompon and Nelly have a win each this year. The seven-time LPGA Tour victor topped the individual leaderboard of the Aramco Team Series in Sotogrande, in August this year. Lexi Thompson won the same event in New York in October.

The winners of last year’s shootout, Kevin Na and Jason Kokrak, have since joined LIV Golf and hence won’t be able to compete to defend their title. But with others like K.H. Lee, Cameron Young, and Jason Day, the LPGA duo will not have an easy task ahead of themselves to make it to the end.

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Will Korda and Thompson create even more history and go on to win the shootout? Let us know what you think in the comments below.