The six-win season has given Nelly Korda’s bank balance a massive boost. Although, following her groundbreaking streak, her poor performance has tarnished her reputation, her seasonal earnings are still atop the charts. On the other hand, Lexi Thompson’s professional career is coming to an end with her retirement at the end of the 2024 season. But how are these players’ career earnings faring so far? Do they have a substantial gap in their accumulated wealth on the greens? Let us find out.
Can Nelly Korda surpass Lexi Thompson’s career earnings?
Lexi Thompson has made 91 career top-10s to date. She has also won 11 times on the LPGA tour since she turned pro in 2010. Upon counting all her earnings on the LPGA Tour, the sum adds up to a whopping $14,513,412 in total. Her biggest purse win? Well, that came to be a massive amount of $718,827. She earned this with a T2 finish at the 2022 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
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Thompson recorded another huge amount of a whopping $500,000 in his purse shares. It was when she won the CME Group Tour Championship in 2018. However, her only major win, the 2014 Chevron Championship had given her only $300,000. That amount was soon surpassed by her other Top 10 finishes
Compared to Thompson’s career on the LPGA Tour, Nelly Korda has been on the greens for a shorter period. Korda started her paycheck with a single $10k when she turned pro in 2016. Two years later, she won the Swinging Skirts LPGA Taiwan Championship presented by CTBC and earned her biggest paycheck till then, $330,000.
However, to date, her career’s highest amount has been received from the 2024 Chevron Championship which was $1,200,000. Moreover, like Thompson, she also earned a huge paycheck from the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. As the winner of its 2021 edition, Korda won a tremendous share of $675,000. Her career earnings on the LPGA Tour stand at $11,880,981 currently.
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Given how Lexi Thompson has announced her retirement after the season, Nelly Korda can soon surpass the difference of $2,632,431 since the apex golfer is not even thinking about retirement. But how has the golfers’ play in 2024 helped their career earnings so far?
How much have Korda and Thompson earned in this season so far?
Lexi Thompson has missed five cuts so far out of which 4 were in a straight streak. This included two majors of the season: the Chevron Championship and the US Women’s Open. Yet, Thompson finished as a runner-up in the Meijer LPGA Classic for Simply Give and earned her season’s biggest share, $234,649. Out of the 10 events she has played this season yet, Thompson did not make any money in four of the events for obvious reasons. Still, the 29-year-old golfer has managed to earn $586,396.
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While Thompson awaits a painful departure from golf, for Nelly Korda, 2024 has been the best season financially. The former has played in 11 events in total, making cuts in 8 of them. In the very first event of the season, she finished at T16, and then her magical streak of five consecutive wins began. In this single season, Korda has earned $2,943,708. Coincidentally, like Thompson, Nelly Korda too had missed cuts in two majors of the season, the U.S. Women’s Open and the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. In the latter event, Thompson finished at T9 and earned $192,046, while Korda’s balance remained $0.
Do you think Nelly Korda can make up for the last few missed cuts she had and surpass Thompson’s all-time earnings? Let us know in the comments below.
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Nelly Korda vs. Lexi Thompson: Who's the real queen of the LPGA Tour?
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