Nelly Korda, Lilia Vu and Rose Zhang will officially represent the USA in Golf at the Olympics in August
The qualifying period for the 2024 Paris Games has ended after the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship officially announced last week that three Americans will be heading to the Olympic course at Le Golf National.
Under the qualification system, a maximum of four golfers per country can qualify for the 2024 Paris Games if they are in the top 15 in the world according to the Rolex Women’s Golf Ranking. Korda, Vu and Zhang — No. 1, No. 2 and No. 9 — made the cut, while Ally Ewing (No. 16) just missed out. The Mississippi native was just two strokes off a solo second-place finish at the very last week, which would have given him a top-15 finish.
The 25-year-old Korda is on the U.S. roster in 2020 as the defending gold medalist for the 2021 Games due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Korda has an amazing six LPGA Tour wins this season, including five in a row. The Bradenton, Fla., native joined Nancy Lopez (1978) and Annika Sorenstam (2004, 2005) as the only players to go 5-for-5 on tour. She has 14 career LPGA wins, including one championship.
Vu, a five-time LPGA champion, comes into the Olympics with a back injury that sidelined her for the first half of the 2024 season. But the time away from competition doesn’t seem to have affected the UCLA product: Vu, 26, won the Meijer LPGA Classic in her first tournament since March. Vu won two major championships in 2023 at the Chevron Championship and the AIG Women’s Open, earning her the world No. 1 ranking until Korda took over last fall.
Zhang, 21, is widely regarded as one of the game’s brightest young stars. A graduate of Stanford University, Zhang was ranked No. 1 in the world amateur rankings for 141 weeks, the longest streak in amateur golf history. After turning pro last June, Zhang won her first LPGA start at the Mizuho Americas Open. He just claimed his second win at the Cognizant Founders Cup, ending Korda’s record winning streak.
All three golfers represented the United States last year at the Solheim Cup, a biennial tournament in Spain. Vu and Zhang will make their 2024 Olympic debut for the first time this summer in France.
