Nelly Korda is back in her bubble and a big year could await

HOUSTON (AP) — Rory McIlroy spent 17 years trying to win the Masters, and when he faced the media for the first time wearing his green jacket, he asked, “What are we going to talk about next year?”

It wasn't that bad for Nelly Korda, even if it felt that way.

The questions about a lifetime goal she was chasing didn't come every year at one tournament. They were crammed into a single season, asking whether she could live up to the past.

Korda won seven times in 2024, the most on the LPGA Tour in 17 years. And then last year she didn't win at all, even though her statistics were similar, if not better in some areas.

“A super frustrating year,” she said. “I would come into a room like this and everyone would be like, ‘Your stats are great, better than last year, but you have zero trophies under your name this year.’ I'm like, ‘I see that, yes.’ It wears on you because that's what you're working for.”

Frustration led to too much thinking, too much analyzing. She wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel, but her wheels were spinning without going anywhere.

“That was paralyzing me," she said. “I told myself I don't ever want to feel like that on a golf course.”

Korda looked nothing like that over four days at Memorial Park when she won The Chevron Championship with a dominance not seen at an LPGA major in 35 years.

She looked free, a powerful place to be when possessing one of the most athletic swings in the game. Korda won by five shots, a margin that could have been anything had she not aimed for the fat of the green over the last three hours to get to the finish line and cannonball into the pool.

Korda had the lead for the last 57 holes of the tournament. Not since Amy Alcott in the 1991 Nabisco Dinah Shore has a player led by two shots or more after each of the four rounds at a major.

What are we going to talk about now?

Korda is back to No. 1 in women's golf and already back to work, on the course Tuesday at Mayakoba for the next tournament.

She already has two wins this year — the first one when the final round was canceled because of extreme cold in Florida, the last one her third career major. In between were a trio of runner-up finishes. She has played in the final group at all five tournaments she has played.

Comparisons with 2024 are becoming inevitable, even though Korda cares little about them.

That's the maturity the 27-year-old American has brought into this year, lessons from a most frustrating 2025.

“I would say the only thing that’s similar is when do you get into a zone like this you’re kind of in your own little bubble,” she said. “And that’s what I was feeling in 2024. I was in my own little bubble. But as for the way that I am mentally in 2024 versus what I am mentally right now, they’re almost two different people.”

If there was a weakness in her game it was short putting. She missed a trio of 4-footers — one for birdie, two for par — on Saturday that kept The Chevron from being a blowout.

“I'm going to make mistakes and miss short putts,” she said. “The lesson I learned on Saturday is that I started thinking like last year a little bit where I started overanalyzing. And I kind of popped my bubble myself. I needed to get back into that bubble.”

She had a little of that in the final round when Korda played ultra conservative with a five-shot lead and began aiming to safe spots on the green. That left her long putts, and then a few 6-foot par putts. She missed one of them and the lead was down to four with six holes to play.

Strange things can happen in golf, particularly between the ears. Korda never let anyone get closer than four shots of her the entire weekend, but miss one putt and the lead can seem smaller.

Doubts began to creep in. She recalls telling her caddie: “I don't want to feel like I felt on Saturday. I want to go out and play golf.” And then she opted against a safe shot on the 13th and fired a wedge at the pin, leaving her a tap-in birdie.

Back in the bubble.

And now the race is on, even if she doesn't have any real targets beyond the next tournament, which this week is the Mexico Riviera Maya Open at Mayakoba. She is the only player from the top 10 in the world in the field, and the only other players from the top 20 are defending champion Chizzy Iwai and her twin sister, Akie.

Korda is more about putting in the work, looking only at the next tournament. She speaks from the same vein as Scottie Scheffler, who is dominating men's golf. Her concern is putting in time on the course and in the gym to be at her best, nothing more.

She took a big leap for that cannonball into the makeshift pool in Houston. Everything else about Korda is small steps. A bubble doesn't leave room for much else.

On The Fringe analyzes the biggest topics in golf during the season. AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Nelly Korda greets fans on the way to the eighth hole during the third round of the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Saturday, April 25, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Nelly Korda hits her tee shot on the 16th hole during the third round of the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Saturday, April 25, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Nelly Korda celebrates after winning the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Nelly Korda celebrates by jumping in the water after winning the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Nelly Korda holds the trophy after winning the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted again on Tuesday, this time in an investigation over a social media photo of seashells arranged on a beach that officials said constituted a threat against President Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The criminal case is the second in a matter of months against Comey and is part of the Trump administration Justice Department's relentless effort to prosecute political opponents of the Republican president. The seashells photo was posted nearly a year ago, but the indictment was secured as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, a Trump loyalist who previously served as his personal lawyer, aims to prove to the president that he's the right person to hold the job permanently.

The fact that the Justice Department pursued a new case against the ex-FBI director months after a separate and unrelated indictment was dismissed could open the government to claims of a vindictive prosecution and to arguments that it is going out of its way to target Comey, who had overseen the early months of an investigation into whether the Republican president’s 2016 campaign had coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of that year’s election. Comey was fired by Trump months into the president’s first term, and they have openly feuded ever since.

The charges in the latest Comey indictment, confirmed to The Associated Press by a person who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter, were not immediately known. Comey's lawyer did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment Tuesday, and a Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately comment.

The prosecution arises from a May post on Instagram in which Comey shared a photo of seashells he saw on a walk in the arrangement of “86 47.” He has said he assumed that the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence. Comey deleted the post shortly after it was made, writing: “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” and “I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

Nonetheless, Comey was swiftly interviewed by the Secret Service after Trump administration officials asserted that he was advocating the assassination of Trump, the 47th president.

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by the AP, says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” It notes: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ‘to kill.’ We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

Trump, in a Fox News Channel interview in May, accused Comey of knowing “exactly what that meant."

“A child knows what that meant,” Trump said. "If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.”

The former FBI director was indicted in September on charges that he lied to and obstructed Congress related to testimony he gave in 2020 about whether he had authorized inside information about an investigation to be provided to a journalist. He denied any wrongdoing, and the case was subsequently dismissed after a judge concluded that the prosecutor who brought the indictment was illegally appointed.

Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and serving before that as a senior Justice Department official in President George W. Bush’s Republican administration.

But the relationship was strained from the start, including after Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private dinner to pledge his personal loyalty to the president -- an overture that so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.

Trump fired Comey in May 2017 amid an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign. That inquiry, later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, would ultimately find that while Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the Trump team welcomed the help, there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal collaboration.

Blanche was elevated earlier this month from deputy attorney general to acting attorney general, replacing Pam Bondi, who had frustrated Trump with the department's struggles to build successful criminal cases against his adversaries. Blanche since then has moved quickly to announce politically charged prosecutions, including a case last week against the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center, which is accused by the Justice Department of defrauding donors by paying donors to infiltrate hate groups. The group has denied any wrongdoing.

Comey is among many Trump foes to face scrutiny over the last year.

The Justice Department, for instance, is also pursuing a criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, another key figure in the Russia investigation -- one of Trump’s chief grievances and a saga that he and his supporters have long sought retaliation for. Brennan has denied doing anything wrong.

CNN was the first to report the second indictment against Comey.

Follow the AP's coverage of former FBI Director James Comey at https://apnews.com/hub/james-comey.

FILE - Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey at Harvard University's Institute of Politics' JFK Jr. Forum in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

FILE - Former FBI Director James Comey speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 17, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)