Korda, Vu, Zhang making ready for Paris on the Amundi Evian Championship

A lot of the world’s finest girls golfers are competing on this week’s Amundi Evian Championship, the fourth main championship of the season, and for a lot of, it will not be their solely journey to France this summer time.

Sixty golfers will return to Paris on Aug. 7-10 for the ladies’s Olympic golf competitors at Le Golf Nationwide, the location of the 2018 Ryder Cup. Former Duke star Celine Boutier, the defending Amundi Evian Championship winner, will signify France within the Olympics.

Every of the highest 10 gamers within the Rolex Girls’s World Golf Rankings certified for the Olympics, together with world No. 1 Nelly Korda, No. 2 Lilia Vu and No. 8 Rose Zhang, who will all signify the U.S.

“Gosh, I am so excited,” Korda stated. “Any time I get to signify my nation it is simply such a very massive honor. To get to do this on the Olympics goes to be an incredible expertise once more. Attending to do it in Paris, possibly this 12 months getting to observe a pair sports activities that we did not get to do in Japan and Tokyo.”

Korda, 25, is the defending gold medalist after ending 17-under 267 on the Tokyo Olympics in August 2021. She completed one shot higher than Japan’s Mone Inami and New Zealand’s Lydia Ko. Inami defeated Ko in a sudden-death playoff to say the silver medal.

Korda battled the rain, warmth and humidity to turn into the primary U.S. lady to seize a gold medal since Margaret Abbott received on the Paris Olympics in 1900. Golf wasn’t included within the Olympics from 1904 to 2012.

In Tokyo, Korda’s sister Jessica carded a 7-under 64 for the low rating of the ultimate spherical and tied for fifteenth. Jessica Korda hasn’t competed on the LPGA Tour since Could 2023 after coping with a again damage. The six-time LPGA winner gave beginning to her first little one, a son named Greyson, in February.

“It will be just a little unhappy not attending to go together with my sister,” Nelly Korda stated. “I believe that is what was so particular about 2021, was attending to share that have with Jess. However, yeah, I am simply actually excited to signify the USA on the Olympics once more.”

Korda retains her gold medal on a shelf in her workplace. Her mom, Regina Rajchrtová, competed in tennis for Czechoslovakia on the 1988 Summer season Olympics in Seoul. Her father, Petr Korda, was ranked as excessive as No. 2 on the earth and received the 1998 Australian Open. Her brother, Sebastian, can also be an expert tennis participant.

“It was by no means actually a dream for me as a result of it was by no means a actuality till 2016 when golf was launched again into the Olympics,” Nelly stated. “It was one thing each 4 years and even two years. We did love watching the Winter Video games as effectively that all of us watched as a household. Again then it was simply my mother that acquired to signify her nation.”

This week, Korda hopes to show issues round after lacking three straight cuts, together with at two majors — the U.S. Girls’s Open and the KPMG Girls’s PGA Championship. Earlier than that, she had received six occasions in seven begins.

“I believe I’ve gone by means of each emotion doable, and it is simply July, on the golf course,” Korda stated. “You recognize, I really like this sport. I really like the unhealthy, I really like the great. The unhealthy makes you recognize the great and that is simply how it’s. It is sports activities. In case you care so deeply about it, you are simply going to undergo the wave of the curler coaster.”

Including to Korda’s tough stretch was an unlucky episode wherein she was bitten on her leg by a canine at a espresso store in Seattle on June 22. She did not reveal a lot about her damage throughout a information convention in France on Wednesday, aside from saying the wound is “getting higher.”

Zhang, 21, was competing at Stanford in Could 2023 and has already received twice on the LPGA Tour, most lately on the Cognizant Founders Cup in Could. In lower than two full seasons on tour, Zhang may have represented the U.S. on the Solheim Cup in Spain and now the Olympics.

“It was nearly mind-boggling as a result of I watched the Olympics ever since I used to be an itty-bitty individual,” Zhang stated. “I watched all of the completely different occasions — gymnastics, swimming, observe and discipline — and now calling myself an Olympian just isn’t one thing that I’ve ever considered earlier than simply because it was to this point into the long run.”

Vu, whose 5 victories on the LPGA Tour the previous two seasons embrace majors on the Chevron Championship and AIG Girls’s Open in 2023, will not must look far for inspiration on the Olympics.

Her late grandfather, Dinh Du, constructed a 32-foot boat to flee the Mekong Delta area after the top of the Vietnam Conflict. In 1982, Du and his spouse, Hongyen Dao, and their 5 youngsters fled Vietnam with 76 others on the wood vessel.

When the boat began taking over water after three days at sea, Vu’s grandfather fired their solely flare as a misery sign. Miraculously, they had been rescued by a passing U.S. vessel. The household finally made its technique to the U.S. and settled in Southern California.

Vu, who performed at UCLA, struggled as an LPGA Tour rookie and misplaced her card after the 2009 season. She tried to work her method again on the Epson Tour and almost gave up the sport. She credit her grandfather for serving to her flip her sport round. When she visited him within the hospital, he informed her: “Go play effectively. Do your finest.”

Du died March 9, 2020.

A missed lower on the 2022 Amundi Evian Championship proved to be a turning level in her profession.

“I felt like simply not in a superb place,” Vu stated. “I used to be actually onerous on myself and upset with how I performed. I felt like I did not dwell as much as form of what I see myself as. And so I bear in mind being within the resort and I am like, ‘I should not take into consideration golf this manner. Anybody would like to be in my place and to play at Evian.’ I modified my perspective for the remaining tournaments and simply tried to have enjoyable out right here and recognize the place I am at.”

Vu’s breakthrough LPGA season got here final 12 months when she received 4 occasions. She added a fifth victory on the Meijer LPGA Traditional in Belmont, Michigan, on June 16.

She’ll be enthusiastic about her late grandfather on the Olympics subsequent month.

“It means the world,” Vu stated. “It signifies that hopefully my grandpa did not construct that boat for nothing, and I can do one thing with the life he gave all of us, and I am by no means going to cease making an attempt my finest.”