Nelly Korda’s playoff victory at the Pelican Women’s Championship last week put her back in front of the race for the Rolex Player of the Year honor. As the LPGA heads into the CME Group Tour Championship, the final tournament of the 2021 season running from Thursday to Sunday, Korda will have to fend off No. 2 Jin Young Ko to add another trophy to an already historic season.

Korda versus Ko is the most obvious storyline of the season finale, but there’s even more on the line in Naples, Fla. this weekend. Here are five things to watch at the last tour event until 2022.

1. A fight to the finish

The 2021 season will be remembered for the back-and-forth battle between Ko and Korda for supremacy of the LPGA world rankings. Two weeks after Ko won the BMW Ladies Championship to resume her position at the top of the rankings and the Player of the Year race, Korda countered with her fourth victory on tour. The difference in their rankings average was in the thousandths before Korda won the Pelican Women’s Championship on Sunday. Now, the American has a little bit of breathing room, with a 0.95 edge over Ko in average world rankings points.

Korda has a more comfortable lead in the Player of the Year race, currently holding a 10-point advantage over Ko after her victory Sunday earned her 30 points and a total of 191 on the year. A win this weekend guarantees Korda the award, worth a coveted LPGA Hall of Fame point.

If Ko finishes in second place, worth 12 points, she needs Korda to finish 10th or lower to win outright. In that same scenario, a ninth-place finish by Korda would mean they share the Player of the Year award. The last time two golfers split the award was in 2017, when So Yeon Ryu and Sung Hyun Park finished the year tied at 162 points. If Ko wins the award, it would be her second such honor in the last three years.

If Ko finishes third or worse, Korda will be named Player of the Year and cap a stellar 2021 campaign. Each player has four wins on the LPGA Tour this season. Korda’s Olympic gold medal did not factor into the race since it was not a tour event.

Korda and Ko are the heavy favorites entering the Tour Championship, which begins Thursday with Round 1. Since the tournament moved to Tiburón Golf Club in 2013, Charley Hull is the only golfer who’s won the event without ever having been ranked top two in the world. The other champions, and their best-career rankings, have been: Shanshan Feng (No. 1) Lydia Ko (No. 1), Cristie Kerr (No. 1), Ariya Jutanugarn (No. 1), Lexi Thompson (No. 2), Sei Young Kim (No. 2) and Jin Young Ko (No. 1).

2. Vare Trophy controversy strikes the LPGA — again

The Vare Trophy honors the golfer with the lowest scoring average on tour in a given season. The golfer must compete in a minimum of 70 rounds or 70 percent of all rounds that season to be considered for the award.

Five LPGA events were canceled this year due to COVID-19, leaving the tour with 110 available rounds. As a result, the top three in scoring average missed out on qualifying for the Vare Trophy.

Nelly Korda (68.845) will finish the year with 62 rounds and Jin Young Ko (69.032) with 67. Yuka Saso (69.103), who joined the tour after her victory in the U.S. Women’s Open in June, has played just 29 rounds this season. Lydia Ko (69.391), in fourth, planned to skip the Pelican Women’s Championship last week but changed her mind when her team realized she could qualify if she played both of the final two events on the LPGA calendar. Ko will finish with 73 rounds at the conclusion of the CME Group Tour Championship.

Last week, the Korda sisters did not hide their displeasure with the fact that neither Korda nor Ko can qualify for the trophy this year due to the minimum rounds requirement.

“I was like, ‘Oh, OK, cool. That sucks.’ That’s pretty much what I said in our group chat,” Nelly Korda said ahead of the Pelican Women’s Championship when asked how she reacted to the news.

“Jin Young has had an amazing past couple events,” Korda added. “If she was to win it, she deserves to win it. I would say the same for me. It kind of sucks that that’s just how it is.”

Jessica Korda, currently ranked 20th on tour, shared a similar opinion.

“It’s just that the person who’s now in the running, is it considered an asterisk or — I don’t know. It’s just such a weird rule when your No. 1 and 2 player in the world … and three players — is it one, two and three aren’t eligible? So it’s just weird.”

Further compounding this is Korda’s chance to make history. If she were eligible for the honor, she’d be threatening the all-time Vare Trophy scoring record. Only Annika Sorenstam has scored below 69 to win the trophy, when she averaged 68.7 in 2002. Korda needs to shoot 22-under at the CME Group Tour Championship to match Sorenstam’s average and record the second-best average in history, behind Jin Young Ko’s 69.062 in 2019.

In 2020, Sei Young Kim (68.686) led the tour in scoring average, but Danielle Kang (70.082 and fourth place on the average scoring list) won the award after completing 49 rounds during the shortened season.

3. The magic number

The winning score of the last three CME Group Tour championships has been 18-under par, achieved by Lexi Thompson in 2018, Sei Young Kim in 2019 and Jin Young Ko last year.

Since the tournament moved to Tiburón Golf Club in 2013, the average winning score has been 16 1/4-under par. Discarding Lydia Ko’s outlier of a 10-under victory in 2014, the average winning score is 17-under par.

4. Last rodeo for the stars

World No. 4 Sei Young Kim and No. 13 Lexi Thompson missed out on their first tour victories of 2021 when they lost in a playoff at the Pelican Women’s Championship last week. They’re not the only top-ranked golfers and recent major champions who will be looking to hoist their first trophies of the season this weekend.

Kang has recorded eight top-10 finishes since losing to Jessica Korda in a playoff at the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions in January. Jeongeun Lee6, the 2019 U.S. Women’s Open champion, had a five-shot lead going into the final round of the Evian Championship in July before losing to Minjee Lee. Aon Risk Reward Challenge winner Hannah Green is searching for her first victory on tour since the 2019 Cambia Portland Classic.

If Kim doesn’t find the winner’s circle this weekend, her six-year streak of winning every year on tour — the longest active streak in the LPGA — will come to an end. As a result, Jin Young Ko would surpass her as the longest active annual champion, having won every year since 2017.

5. The last chance to be world No. 1

Whoever sits at the top of the world rankings after the CME Group Tour Championship will get at least six uncontested weeks as the No. 1 player in the world. The LPGA has not yet announced its 2022 schedule, but in the last three years, the tour has started with the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in late January.

Korda has spent 19 weeks as the world No. 1, which ties her for 12th on the all-time rankings. If she wins this weekend, she can leap to T-7 by the beginning of 2022 for having held onto the top spot for 25 weeks alongside Stacy Lewis and Jiyai Shin. One week later, she’d move into sixth place behind Annika Sorenstam, the first world No. 1 in the history of the rankings who’s held it for 61 weeks.

Ko is alone in second place with 114 weeks atop the world rankings. If she surpasses Korda this weekend, she would surge to 120 weeks by 2022 and be 38 weeks behind Lorena Ochoa for the most spent at No. 1 since the rankings were created in 2006.

Kent Paisley is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering golf and the LPGA. He also contributes to Golf Digest. Follow him on Twitter @KentPaisley.

Notre Dame standout Olivia Miles will forgo the 2025 WNBA Draft, instead opting to stay in the NCAA for her final year of college eligibility. But she reportedly will not for the Fighting Irish.

Miles is set to enter the transfer portal, posted ESPN’s Shams Chariana on Monday, moving on from Notre Dame after back-to-back Sweet 16 exits.

"Notre Dame's Olivia Miles — the projected No. 2 pick in the WNBA draft this month — will forgo the draft and enter NCAA's transfer portal, sources tell ESPN," the journalist posted on X. "The 22-year-old top prospect makes unprecedented decision to use her one year remaining of college instead of the draft."

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Miles shakes up the 2025 WNBA draft

Miles will certainly have her choice of top-ranked NCAA programs. But the projected No. 2 draft pick’s decision also has major implications on both the 2025 WNBA Draft and the 2026 draft lottery.

The junior started all 34 games this season for Notre Dame. She averaged a career-high 15.4 points per game while maintaining 48.3% effectiveness from the field.

"I love college. I think I've outgrown it a little bit, though, so that makes my decision tougher to stay. It's comfortable, a place where you have security," the star guard told ESPN after Saturday's loss.

With UConn’s Paige Bueckers sitting comfortably at No. 1, expected Top 5 pro recruits USC’s Kiki Iriafen, South Carolina’s Te-Hina Paopao, and fellow Irish Sonia Citron could all see a rankings boost.

As South Carolina women's basketball returns to the Final Four, the 2024 NCAA champions’ March Madness journey hasn’t exactly mirrored last year’s dominance. But their resilience has kept them very much in contention.

The Gamecocks bounced back from third-quarter deficits in their last two tournament games, relying on tight defense and smart positional rotations to wear opponents down.

“It is that type of year, that for us, there’s not any blowouts,” head coach Dawn Staley said after her team’s Elite Eight win over Duke. “We have to grind for every single win that we can get.”

South Carolina taps into depth after WNBA departures

After losing center Kamilla Cardoso to the 2024 WNBA Draft, the Gamecocks harnessed their depth, relying on strict minute restrictions to disrupt game flow and launch second-half runs.

Sophomore standout MiLaysia Fulwiley has popped off the bench, complementing leading scorer Joyce Edwards and inside show-runner Chloe Kitts.

One of the team’s key veteran leaders, senior Te-Hina PaoPao has been a grounding force as the only player averaging 25+ minutes per game.

Defense is key to Gamecocks victory

For the Gamecocks to become back-to-back champs, they’ll have to lean hard on their time-honored calling card: defense.

"Look, I mean, at this point it's not going to look pretty. Okay? It's not," Staley said after South Carolina narrowly escaped Sweet 16 opponent Duke. "There are stretches in each game that is not going to look pretty… Some of it's not going to look as smoothly as us coaches and players envision or how you practice, but you certainly have to get down and play the kind of game that's presented in front of you, and we'll do that."

“If we’re not scoring a whole lot of points, then we gotta up our defense,” she continued. “If we’re scoring a lot of points, we gotta up our defense.”

The USWNT announced their final match of the summer’s three-game international window yesterday, with the team set to take on northern neighbors Canada in Washington, DC on July 2nd.

The friendly rounds out a bill that also includes two previously announced clashes with the Republic of Ireland scheduled for June 26th (Commerce City, Colorado) and 29th (Cincinnati, Ohio).

Canada coach Casey Stoney has an edge on the US

With much of Europe focused on the 2025 Euros, July’s bout with Canada will mark the North American nations’ 67th meet-up — but the first under Canada’s new boss.

Coach Casey Stoney arrived in Canada after parting ways with the San Diego Wave last June, her two years of NWSL experience providing extra familiarity with many USWNT stars.

Stoney previously led WSL side Manchester United for four seasons, giving her further insight into current USWNT manager — and ex-Chelsea head coach — Emma Hayes’s style.

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USWNT faces Brazil without injured defender Tierna Davidson

Yesterday, the US posted a major roster change ahead of this month’s friendlies against Brazil, with Gotham center-back Tierna Davidson officially sidelined due to a knee injury suffered last weekend.

Davidson will be replaced by 19-year-old Angel City defender Gisele Thompson, who earned her first two senior caps during February’s SheBelieves Cup.

While Hayes’s USWNT is all about fierce competition and roster experimentation, mounting injuries could force the team into thinner lineups than expected — and up the competition across the board.

No. 1 seed Texas and No. 2 seed UConn punched their tickets to Tampa last night, joining No. 1 seeds UCLA and South Carolina in the Final Four after two tight matchups closed out the NCAA tournament’s fourth round.

Texas got the best of in-state foe TCU 58-47, behind a game-high 18-point performance from SEC Player of the Year Madison Booker.

UConn then handled USC 78-64, holding off the JuJu Watkins-less Trojans as superstar guard Paige Bueckers followed up her career-high 40-point Sweet 16 performance by dropping 31 points on the night.

"We're just so grateful, but we know like the journey isn't done," Bueckers said after the game. "We want our story to continue as long as possible, and we have business to finish."

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Texas books first Final Four appearance since 2003

After four Elite Eight appearances in five years, the Longhorns finally punched their ticket to the Final Four — their first time back since 2003 — behind a tenacious defense that forced 21 TCU turnovers.

“Anybody that watched that game today, when they turned the TV off, they had to go, ‘Wow, that freaking team plays their ass off,’” Texas head coach Vic Schaefer said after the game.

"I'm having fun with it now," Booker told reporters. "March Madness — you’re supposed to have fun."

"I’m so proud of myself and proud of my team to get to this moment," Harmon said after registering 13 points against TCU.

"Rori Harmon is still that girl," echoed Booker.

Bueckers leads UConn to the NCAA Final Four

The Huskies are headed to their fourth Final Four in the last five years. They advanced on a balanced scoring strategy that saw three different players put double-digit points on the board.

In addition to Bueckers’s 30-piece, freshman phenom Sarah Strong ran the frontcourt. Strong paired 22 points with 17 rebounds and four assists for her fifth postseason double-double. Additionally, Princeton transfer Kaitlyn Chen bolstered the backcourt with 15 points of her own.

"There's Disneyland, there's Disney World and then there's UConn World," Auriemma said. "These are fantasy numbers that make no sense. You couldn't predict this and you couldn't script this at all."

All four remaining teams have the potential to win a national championship. Now it’s a matter of who can deliver when the going gets tough.