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Opinion
The WTGL has unveiled its five founding rosters packed with elite talent - and the glaring absence of world number one Nelly Korda tells you everything about the state of this shiny new venture.
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Women's golf loves a launch party. New league, slick branding, five city-branded teams, a simulator arena in Palm Beach Gardens, and a press release stuffed with enough superlatives to wallpaper the SoFi Center twice over. Beautiful. Shiny. Impressive.
And yet the most interesting thing about the WTGL's founding rosters is not who is on them. It is who is missing.
Nelly Korda - reigning world number one, the single most recognisable name in women's golf - is absent from all five squads. Not Atlanta Drive. Not New York. Not even the deep bench of Motor City. Nowhere.
Twenty-five players were selected. They carry 112 LPGA victories, 15 major titles, and 48 Solheim Cup caps between them. And the woman who is supposed to be the face of the sport was not deemed worthy of inclusion. Or she chose not to join. Either explanation is damning.
Let us run the scenarios. If the WTGL invited Korda and she said no, then this supposedly game-changing league could not attract its biggest potential star before it has even played a single match. That is catastrophic optics. It suggests the product is not compelling enough - or the money is not serious enough - for the one player who would guarantee casual eyeballs.
If they did not invite her? That is even worse. It means the league's organisers looked at the most decorated active player in women's golf and decided she did not fit their plans. Good luck selling that to sponsors.
I accept that the WTGL roster is genuinely impressive on paper. Charley Hull brings the personality. Lydia Ko brings the prestige. Rose Zhang and Linn Grant bring the youth. Jeeno Thitikul and Brooke Henderson bring the trophies. Thirteen nations represented across five teams is a strong diversity play.
And the format - three players per match, mirroring TGL - could be brilliant for television. Short, punchy, easy to follow. I am not dismissing the concept.
This is the part that bothers me. Korda's recent form has been dreadful. A tied 50th finish at the FM Championship last weekend. A tied 15th at the Women's Scottish Open in July. She has been drifting all summer while younger players - Ruoning Yin, Thitikul, Miyu Yamashita - have been racking up titles with frightening regularity.
Perhaps the WTGL looked at that and decided Korda's star is fading. Perhaps they calculated that Yin, who just claimed her sixth LPGA title at TPC Boston with the coldest putting display of the season, is the future and Korda is the past.
If so, they might be right on the golf. But they are wrong on the business. You do not build a new sports league by excluding the most famous player in the sport. The Premier League did not launch by telling Alan Shearer to stay home.
The WTGL kicks off at the SoFi Center in a couple of months. The rosters are locked. The teams are branded. The simulator technology is presumably being polished as we speak.
But every press conference, every preview show, every promotional interview will face the same question. Where is Nelly Korda? And until the league has a satisfying answer, it will be defined not by the 25 players it selected - but by the one it did not.
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Copyright 2026 VIASPORT
Eva Hernández, Editor-in-Chief
VIASPORT uses AI to generate, enhance, and quality-assure its journalism. While we strive to create engaging and accurate material, imagery, grammar, and spelling may occasionally deviate from conventional standards.
