Hosted at Hazeltine National Golf Club, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship has a lot on the line for Nelly Korda. Besides the record $13 million purse value, she is also chasing her third consecutive major title and eligibility for the LPGA Hall of Fame.

The World No. 1 started the event with an opening round of 2-under 70, which included a costly mistake on the par-4 16th. Her Round 1 featured a bogey, a double bogey, and five birdies. However, she remained optimistic about the round and said she was “pretty happy” with her day. Here is how she continued in Round 2 of the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship 2026.

The story of Nelly Korda’s performance on the back nine in Round 2

Nelly Korda started her second round on the back nine alongside Hannah Brooke and Sei Young Kim at 1:42 PM CDT.

The 19-time LPGA winner started her round with two back-to-back birdies on holes 10 and 11. On the par-4 10th, she hit a 259-yard drive to the fairway and followed it with a 156-yard shot on the green. With only 6 feet and 10 inches to the hole, she made the birdie putt on the first hole of the day. She continued the momentum on the par-5 561-yard 11th hole, where she hit a 9-foot 11-inch birdie putt.

The 27-year-old followed these two with three on-par scores before hitting another birdie on the 15th, and then another one on the 18th. The key highlight of the back nine was her Tee-to-Green game, which helped her gain 2.625 strokes.

By the end of the back nine, she had added 4 more strokes to her score of 2-under opening round. This helped her propel to the T2 position on the leaderboard.

Korda couldn’t carry that momentum in the front nine

Unlike the back nine, Nelly Korda’s front nine started with a little blunder. Her drive on the par-4 1st was nowhere close to even decent, and she knew it as soon as she hit the ball. Although the ball traveled 280 yards, it went left of the fairway and even the trees. With those trees obstructing the path to the hole, the World No. 1 was forced to hit the second shot 60 yards to the right fairway instead of aiming for the green. This led to a bogey on the first hole.

However, she recovered quickly with a birdie on the 3rd, thanks to the 10-foot, 8-inch birdie putt. However, that was the last. From the 4th hole through the 9th, she made pars.

Thus, her second round concluded with 4-under 68, taking her total score to 6-under 138. If we exclude the costly mistake she made on the 16th hole in her opening round, Friday was almost the same as Thursday.

Currently, she is tied for 5th on the leaderboard. While there are a handful of professionals yet to complete their round, it is unlikely that any golfer would be able to change Korda’s leaderboard position.

Here are her stats for the day:

Ina Yoon continued her lead on the second day. She finished her two rounds with 12-under 132. With just 6 strokes behind the leader, Nelly Korda is right there in contention to win her third consecutive major and create more history.