While Rory McIlroy returns to the course for the first time since completing the career Grand Slam at the Masters, professional golf's spotlight turns to the LPGA Tour this week, as the world's best women's golfers will compete in the Chevron Championship, the first major of the season.
World No. 1 golfer Nelly Korda will attempt to defend her title at The Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Texas. Last year, Korda joined Nancy Lopez and Annika Sörenstam as the only golfers in LPGA history to win in five consecutive starts. Korda hasn't yet won this year.
After defeating Justin Rose in a one-hole playoff at Augusta National, McIlroy will be back in action at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, the only team event on the PGA Tour schedule.
McIlroy and his teammate, Shane Lowry, will attempt to become the first pair to defend their title at the Zurich Classic since the team concept was introduced in 2017.
The LIV Golf League also is back in action at Club De Golf Chapultepec in Mexico City on Friday.
Here's a look at what to watch in golf this week:
Korda's major defense
When Korda arrived at the Chevron Championship a year ago, she had already won four times that season and would add her fifth with a two-stroke victory over Maja Stark to claim her second career major championship. Korda would win seven times in 2024, adding the Mizuho Americas Open in May and The Annika in November.
This season, Korda will be searching for her first victory in her sixth start. She was runner-up in the season-opening Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in early February and tied for seventh at the Founders Cup.
"I would say last year is last year," Korda said. "This is a brand new year. What I achieved last year, no one can take that from me. That's always going to be such a great memory, but it's a fresh week and fresh mindset."
Korda feels better about her iron play after tying for 16th at 14 under in last week's JM Eagle LA Championship at El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana, California, and she's waiting for her putter to heat up again.
"I think that's where it's been lacking, is the putts that I was making last year," Korda said. "I'm just not making as many this year, but that's just golf. I've gone through waves like this before, and if I just continue working at it, hopefully it does click."
Korda revealed earlier this month that she takes her mind off golf by building Lego sets. Last week, she completed a McLaren Formula 1 set that a fan gave her, along with a model of Simba from the "Lion King."
"Going to make my dad do LEGOs with me this week," Korda said. "Maybe do some games. We both are really competitive. Something we always played together, Sequence. I think I am going to pick that up. Stuff like that gets my mind off it."
Happy to be there
Lilia Vu, the 2023 Chevron Championship winner, wasn't sure she'd be able to play golf again after pulling out of last year's first major of the season with a back injury. Vu revealed on Tuesday that she couldn't hit a ball 40 yards on the driving range before she withdrew prior to the first round.
"I think last year I was so much in panic with would I ever play a golf round again, let alone a tournament round?" Vu said. "At that point, you think about different things. Not even defending that tournament; I can't even play one hole, so that was kind of going through my mind. It was a good time to reevaluate everything."
Vu called her long hiatus from competitive golf the "hardest two months" of her life. She read a lot and listened to audio books while recovering. She also missed the U.S. Women's Open before returning to tie for second at the Women's PGA Championship and the Women's British Open.
"Just tried my best to become a better person," Vu said. "That's all I could improve at that point. Physically, I was trying my best with [physical therapy] and learning how to breathe correctly and fixing my posture, the way I sit.
"Just a whole kind of life change I would say. I think everything happens for a reason, and I think that needed to happen so that I could have more body awareness."
Zhang on the mend
Former two-time NCAA Division I national champion Rose Zhang will miss her second straight start while she recovers from a neck injury. She suffered the injury in her first-round match in the T-Mobile Match Play in Las Vegas on April 3. She was forced to pull out of her second-round match.
In a post on Zhang's Instagram account on April 6, she wrote: "Safe to say, things haven't been too hot for me in the golf realm and I found myself struggling to compete in high spirits due to an injury. Just remember, this isn't a sob story. While this period is unique and frustrating, I find great optimism in getting better and working hard to compete at the highest level."
Zhang is finishing up her studies at Stanford, so she has appeared in only three LPGA events this year. She tied for 10th in the Tournament of Champions and missed the cut at the Ford Championship in late March.
It's unclear when she'll return to competition.
Lindblad's fast success
After picking up her first LPGA victory in only her third start as a rookie at last week's JM Eagle LA Championship, former LSU star Ingrid Lindblad received a couple of surprising DMs on Instagram.
One came from Sörenstam, a 10-time major championship winner, and the other from Suzann Pettersen, the most recent European Solheim Cup team captain.
"Couple of bigger names, in my opinion, that kind of congratulated me," Lindblad said. "Pretty cool. Your name is out there. You're not a total stranger."
It might not be long before Lindblad is also a household name in women's professional golf. She was runner-up at the 2022 Augusta National Women's Amateur and was ranked No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking for 53 weeks.
In the 2022 U.S. Women's Open at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina, she carded a 6-under 65 in the first round, the lowest score by an amateur in the event. She tied for 11th at 1 under. Lindblad tied for 26th at 5 under in last year's Amundi Evian Championship.
Lindblad, from Sweden, needed only nine starts on the Epson Tour last year to earn her LPGA card.
Congratulatory messages from Sörenstam and Pettersen weren't her only surprises since winning on Sunday.
"I'm supposed to pay for one bag when I fly Delta," Lindblad said. "They waived my baggage fee and I'm like, 'Alright.' But I don't know if that was me or they did something wrong."
Schauffele makes unlikely assist
Justin Thomas is fired up after sinking the long putt in a playoff for the RBC Heritage win.
After collecting his first PGA Tour victory in nearly three years at last week's RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, Justin Thomas provided reporters with an unlikely answer when he was asked about his dramatic putting improvement this season.
He credited two-time major champion Xander Schauffele for helping him turn things around. Near the end of last year, Thomas asked Schauffele to play a practice round with him near their homes in Jupiter, Florida.
"You guys obviously know Xander, but he doesn't leave any box unchecked," Thomas said. "Like he said that day, he's like, 'If it has anything to do with you potentially improving in golf, I've probably done it or tried it.' So I just was talking to him about this process and how he reads greens and how he sees things and his practice and everything."
What Thomas figured out was that he didn't have a consistent "home base" when it came to practicing putting.
A year ago, Thomas ranked 174th on tour in strokes gained: putting (minus-.478). This season, he's 24th in that statistic (.459) and was seventh in the field over 72 holes at Hilton Head Island.
"I think more than anything, it was just sort of he was searching and maybe trying too hard," Schauffele said. "He's done so many good things in the past that it was sort of like maybe an eye-opening. Sort of like, 'I used to do, three, four, five of the things we were talking about, and I stopped doing them because I was down this crazy rabbit hole of trying to get better.'
"[I] felt like all the answers were right in front of him. JT is so good that he figured it out pretty quickly."
JT's sticking with his caddie
In picking up his first win on tour since the 2022 PGA Championship, Thomas was aided by Max Homa's former caddie, Joe Greiner. But Thomas told SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio on Monday that his regular caddie, Matt "Rev" Minister, will be back on his bag when he recovers from a back injury.
"We all knew that going in -- it was very much a fill-in situation," Thomas said. "We were so lucky that Joe was available until Rev got healthy."