U.S. Women's Open 2024
Nelly Korda has chance to reach this incredible earnings mark
Nelly Korda poses with her winner's check at the 2024 LPGA Drive On Championship.
Julio Aguilar
With an impressive six-win season achieved before the close of May, Nelly Korda is the primary beneficiary of the LPGA Tour's groundbreaking purse increases and on the brink of entering uncharted fiscal territory. Korda's current earnings stand at $2,943,708 from just eight events in 2024, already garnering the eighth-most money in a single season in tour history. The American, incredibly, has achieved this with more than 70 percent of the LPGA's $123 million season-long purse yet to be paid out.
As the tour's prime earning season, with four majors to be played, kicks off with the U.S. Women's Open this week, Korda could rewrite the record books. Not only could she break Lorena Ochoa's all-time earnings mark of $4,364,994 in 2007, but Korda could potentially more than double it and have one of the highest earning seasons in all of women's sports history.
The lion's share of the LPGA's money is in its majors, and since 2021, the purses for those championships have grown by 97 percent. Unsurprisingly, outside of Ochoa, the six other all-time earning seasons ahead of Korda have come either during 2021 or after.
1st—Lorena Ochoa $4,364,994 (2007)
2nd— Lydia Ko $4,364,403 (2022)
3rd—Minjee Lee $3,809,960 (2022)
4th—Lilia Vu $3,502,303 (2023)
5th—Jin Young Ko $3,502,161 (2021)
6th—Amy Yang $3,165,834 (2023)
7th—Allisen Corpuz $3,094,813 (2023)
Korda already benefited from continued major purse increases this year. Before the 25-year-old's victory in April’s Chevron Championship, the tournament raised its purse from $5.2 million in 2023 to $7.9 million this year, boosting Korda's winner's check from $780,000 to $1.2 million.
Multiple million-dollar-plus checks have yet to be earned at this year's majors. This week's U.S. Women's Open raised its purse from $11 million last year to $12 million. While the purse breakdown has not been released for this year, the first-place prize will increase to $2.4 million, up from Allisen Corpuz's $2 million at Pebble Beach in 2023. A solo runner-up would also garner a seven-digit payday.
The KPMG Women's PGA Championship has not announced its 2024 purse, but it was $10 million last season. Ruoning Yin took home $1.5 million for her title. The AIG Women's Open raised its purse to $9 million, as Lilia Vu earned $1.35 million for the victory. The Amundi Evian Championship has a $6.5 million purse, with Celine Boutier cashing $1 million with her win.
Last year, the LPGA announced that the CME's purse would grow from $7 million to $11 million. The increase primarily benefits the winner of the season-ending event, as the first-place prize doubles from $2 million to $4 million. That figure is the largest winner's payout in women's sports.
Let's put our Gordon Gekko hats on and get greedy. Suppose Korda wins the U.S. Women's Open and the CME Group Tour Championship and doesn't earn another dime in 2024. In that case, she will still shatter any previous precedent of an earnings and become the tour's first $9 million player.
Should Korda win those two events and earn an additional $1 million over the rest of the campaign, she would become only the fourth female athlete to earn $10 million in one year, joining tennis players Angelique Kerber ($10.1 million in 2016), Ashleigh Barty ($11.3 million in 2019), and Serena Williams who did it twice: $10.5 million in 2015, and $12.3 million in 2013.