TWO months on Australia’s Gold Coast, three weeks playing golf in the USA and a month in the Swiss Alps. It sounds like the holiday of a lifetime, but for Adam Scott it was far from it. Instead, it was the game of musical chairs the affable Queenslander performed on loop in 2017. You see, Scott was trying to strike a balance not many have managed to pull off. A balance between ensuring the health of his pregnant wife Marie, who was carrying the couple’s second child, and trying to compete with the 300-yard-hitting 20-somethings of modern golf.
Scott’s preferred base in the Bahamas is not the most ideal place for pregnant women, given the risk of contracting the Zika virus associated with a large proportion of that part of the world. But Scott has never been one to make excuses.
Winless, Major-less. Last year the 2013 Masters champion didn’t enjoy the sort of season he demands from himself. However, a healthy newborn son, who goes by the name of Byron Scott, certainly makes his old man feel justified about a “consistently average” season that yielded just four top-10 finishes and nine top-25s from 16 events. Particularly for a guy who has geared his schedule around peaking for the Majors for more than six years, a tie for 22nd at the British Open and 61st at the US PGA Championship was not his best year on golf’s biggest stage.
“I feel like, with Byron and Marie being healthy and everything, I made all the right decisions and that’s firing me up to make 2018 great,” Scott tells Australian Golf Digest.
With a tie for ninth at his happy hunting ground of Augusta National, and a season-best share of sixth at the Players Championship, Scott got a whiff of the big stage last year. And it’s made him hungrier than ever to return to his perennially world-class form.
Lessons From The Past
As a 13-time US PGA Tour winner and former world No.1, coming off a poor year is akin to standing on a tee and ripping an angry drive straight up the middle immediately after making a bogey.
“I think that’s a pretty fair analogy,” Scott says. “For some reason, you can sharpen your focus and think clearer.”
“These off-form years, I think, are learning years.
You can really identify things you might want to change or work on.”
The Adelaide-born, Gold Coast-raised Scott offers the example of his lacklustre 2015 season. He didn’t win then, and had to spend the best part of the year dealing with the speculation of what he’d do with the broomstick putter – with which he putted his way to Australia’s first Masters green jacket – once the ban on anchoring it to the body became illegal on January 1, 2016.
But with a return to the short putter he bagged a runner-up at the LA Open at Riviera Country Club immediately prior to back-to-back Florida victories at the Honda Classic and WGC–Cadillac Championship at Doral.
“Yeah, 2015 was a very similar kind of year for me. I just played OK, but OK doesn’t look very good among the best players in the world,” Scott says. “But I came out in 2016 and really put it all together nicely.
“What I can’t do is take too much out of 2017. To me it was a bit of an anomaly; travelling a lot to be with my family who weren’t where I was all the time cut into a lot of [my routine]. I think, therefore, it had an effect on the way I normally like to prepare and practise.
“I never really got anything going and I shouldn’t be that surprised. I found it at times frustrating but other times it was also a fantastic year for me, on a personal level.”
Scott played the tournament before each of the five tournaments he dubbed “title fights” in 2017: the four Majors and the Players. It meant he ended long absences from the Houston Open before the Masters, the Wells Fargo prior to the Players, the FedEx St Jude Classic before the US Open and the Scottish Open as a warm-up for the British Open.
“I’m re-evaluating that schedule. That was part of my planning for the [pregnancy], with my different practice schedule and travelling arrangements,” Scott says. “I thought it was a good idea … and I think it went well to be perfectly honest with you, and I was quite happy with it. But I’ll have to sit down and work out if that’s the best way to peak for the Majors this year. I just don’t know.
“There were some OK results but nothing I’d like to brag about, so I’d like to have everything set in place this year to give myself a good run at it, because the standard of golf has lifted yet again. The guys are playing at incredibly high levels for short stretches throughout the year so to just get in there and get a win at the right time is going to be tough. You’re going to really have to lift yourself to be part of that conversation.”
Far From Broken
There were enough positive signs in 2017 to let Scott know his best years are ahead of him. In a year dominated by enormously long and accurate players such as Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm and Hideki Matsuyama, 37-year-old Scott sat in a sneaky-good 15th place on the US PGA Tour’s average driving distance category. He hammered it out there 281 metres (307 yards) on average, and as he looks to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am as his first event of 2018, he’s not intimidated by generation next.
“I don’t think any of the older players are fearing the younger guys,” Scott says. “As much bravado as the young guys have and the performances they’ve been putting in, which are great, there’s still nothing they’re doing that I don’t see older guys able to do.”
Although only two-and-a-half years from turning 40, Scott’s meticulous attention to staying limber – not hammering the weights like some of the power-obsessed youngsters on tour – has him feeling relaxed about his career. He sees himself like a Fred Couples, Angel Cabrera, Phil Mickelson or Ernie Els – guys who have managed to stay loose and play great golf into their 40s.
“My body is holding up great, so I really see myself playing without any [injuries] for the foreseeable future,” Scott says. “I really think the people I’ve worked with on my body over the years have done an incredible job. Essentially, I have zero injuries or restrictions or niggles. Nothing is holding me back and it’s kept me in tremendous shape.
“My speed is going up. Last year, my speed was the highest I think it’s ever been. What I need to do is control that a little bit!
“If you wanted to put a number on it – let’s say 45 or 50 years of age – I’m going to be in great shape if I keep giving it the attention I have been.”
“I think I’ve got a great understanding of what my body needs and so do the people I work with, but it’s just a matter of discipline and doing it.”
“The discipline and sacrifice it takes to perform at the highest level is no different in other sports.”
“I’m looking forward to 2018 for a lot of reasons. I think I’ve still got my best years ahead of me.”
Although ‘DJ’ built a seemingly insurmountable lead during the first half of 2017, when he ended Australian Jason Day’s 47-week reign as world No.1, golf saw a number of challengers to the throne. Thomas won five times on the US Tour, including a maiden Major championship at the PGA and the $US10 million FedEx Cup title, while Jordan Spieth claimed his third Major at the British Open and Japanese star Matsuyama threatened to really explode.
It is why Scott isn’t concerned about a Tiger Woods-style runaway reign.
“We haven’t seen a stream of young guys come out like this since well before Tiger Woods,” Scott recalls. “Because Tiger kind of squashed the hope of any young guy. But not only did he squash the hope of young guys, he just squashed the hope of anyone.
“This is the post-Tiger generation we’re seeing and they haven’t come out to face a guy they thought was unbeatable.”
What’s very hard now is to play at the top level week in, week out. Not even the top guys do it these days. They can do it for a month or so, but then the level tapers off. It’s just such a tough game to compete in these days, I don’t know if anyone can do it all the time at the moment.
“It’s just a matter of pacing myself. I feel like I was getting things together towards the end of 2017 but my health wasn’t good enough; I seemed to catch the ’flu all the time like everyone managed to, and I just struggled.
“This year is going to be great; I’m very excited about it.”
