At the risk of speaking for all of us in the greater Australian sports-watching collective – call us the punterati – but Adam Scott’s single Australian Open victory, at windy old New South Wales in 2009, has left us unfulfilled, unsated, unbecome. We’re the orphan kid in Oliver – mate, surely that’s not it.
While he’s not in Greg Norman at Augusta territory for unrequited love, Scott’s sole national title feels like a microcosm of his greater career. One win in our national championship since his first outing 23 years ago? One win in 90 major championship starts? It doesn’t sit right.
Maybe we’re being naive, greedy, something, or something. Unbecoming, perhaps. But for a golfer with a swing that sublime, who has won in Qatar, Singapore and Scandinavia, and who has earned – cue your best Dr Evil – $100 million in prizemoney on the PGA Tour to be Australia’s greatest-ever earner on that tour, it doesn’t compute.
Adam’s not that flash with the maths, either.
“I’ve been close so many times at the Aussie Open, and I definitely have a bit of unfinished business there,” Scott said in a Zoom call from Japan. “I’ll be coming home with confidence, and I’d like to win both [the Australian Open and Australian PGA], to be perfectly honest.”
Since his first Australian Open at Kingston Heath in 2000 – a creditable T13 six months after turning pro – Scott has six top-fives, three runner-ups and a ‘W’. He’s missed the cut three times in
