Adam Scott will kick off a new-look tournament schedule at the PGA Tour’s Houston Open this week, where he will be one of five Australians in the field at the Memorial Park Golf Course.
Now based in Switzerland, the 2013 Masters winner is making a few changes to his wraparound playing schedule that should also see him begin the new year on the European Tour’s Middle East swing.
Scott will tee up in the Houston Open, beginning Friday morning, AEDT, for just the third time in 12 years – having won the event in 2007.
The 41-year-old will then tee up at next week’s RSM Classic on Sea Island, Georgia for the first time.
That will be it for competition for Scott in 2021.
After that, the world No.40 intends to head to the Middle East in the new year, where he is likely to play the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship and the Dubai Desert Classic.
Both are tournaments within the competitive Rolex Series of the European Tour, which has been rebranded as the DP World Tour.
Dubai joins the Rolex Series from 2022 and it will be the first time in its 32-year history that the Desert Classic will be part of the European Tour’s premium category of events
Scott hasn’t played the early part of the year in the Middle East since 2009, when he played the Qatar Masters.
“Now I’m based in Switzerland, I need to look at a few different scheduling aspects and how I travel and it looks like I’m going to play the Middle East swing,” Scott told Australian Golf Digest.
“They are Rolex Series events, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and then I’ll head over to the US. I’ll start in LA (at the Genesis Invitational) having played some golf in the Middle East.”
COVID-19 has affected Scott’s playing calendar, given he would normally return to Australia at the end of the year and have a break before heading over the US in February.
But his form would often be rusty during the PGA Tour’s West Coast swing (except for 2020 when he won the Genesis Invitational in Los Angeles for his first tournament that year).
“It’s a much shorter trip for me and my family from Switzerland to the Middle East and [it’s probably more productive than] kind of grinding through the West Coast swing,” he said.
Scott will be joined in the field at the Houston Open by countrymen Cam Smith, who at world No.22 is the top-ranked Australian male, as well as Marc Leishman, Jason Day and Cam Davis.
Scott will play the first two rounds in Houston with Patrick Reed and John Huh, while Leishman is in a hot group with Matthew Wolff and Tony Finau.
Smith was also given a marquee group with four-time Major winner Brooks Koepka and Tyrrell Hatton.
