Nelly Korda’s recent dip in form mirrors Scottie Scheffler's explanation of mental fatigue and the exhaustive burden of constant contention during the Open Championship.

At the 2026 Open Championship, Scheffler described how being relentlessly at the top wears an athlete down. He compared it with an NFL team that runs out of gas after a deep playoff run.

“I feel at peace, yeah. I think sometimes it’s not like — it’s never the best thing to miss a cut, but like I said, sometimes having a couple days off, resetting, getting some time away — throughout the year, it’s like — when you look at other sports and if you look at a football team that’s made it really far each year in the NFL, it’s really hard to continue to do that each and every year," Scheffler said during the Open Championship, per Golf.com.

This reality hit both superstars simultaneously when they shockingly missed the cut on the same weekend—Scheffler at the Scottish Open and Korda at the Evian Championship.

Korda can relate with a little bit more than anyone, given how she started her season.

She won the Chevron Championship, then the U.S. Women’s Open, and for a while it looked like the rest of the LPGA Tour was just trying to keep up.

When Korda reached the KPMG Women's PGA Championship, she was sitting on 25 of the 27 Hall of Fame points she needs for enshrinement.

From there it got worse. A cold putter from Korda let Haeran Ryu slip away with the title at Hazeltine. After that, Korda shot 74-69 at Evian to miss the cut by a single stroke, snapping a 34-tournament streak of made cuts.

She then took the week off and went to Prague — a city she calls a second home — before returning for the Scottish Open.

"One, recharge the batteries," Korda said of her week away from golf, per Golf.com.

"You live a little bit of a normal life for one week. It's my second home. Obviously I have a home base there, so I can also practice and really kind of get back to my roots."

Korda still has a chance to make history at Royal Lytham

A week after missing the cut in Scotland, Scheffler finished T4 at the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale — one of his best major finishes of the year, even if it left him without a title for the first time since 2023.

Korda gets her own shot at turning a rough patch into a statement this week at the AIG Women's Open, the final major of the year, at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.

A win this week gives her a fourth different major among the LPGA's current five — completing the career Grand Slam — and the two Hall of Fame points that would push her from 25 to the 27 required for induction.

And if there's a positive to carry out of Scotland, it's the way she left the Dundonald Links. Korda's final-round 69 at Dundonald was her best round of the week, played through conditions that ranged from sunshine to sideways rain — almost similar to what she's going to face this week at the last major of the season.

“Very up-and-down week,” Korda said after finishing T16 at Scotland.

“It was nice to finish with a good round on Sunday leading into next week, but I think any time that you get to play in this kind of weather right before the British, it’s great prep and you know what you’re going to get."

Read more at Club Golf!

Written by

Md Saife Fida