by Shane Ryan
He’d been tabbed as the next great thing from the start, and to cement his status as an all-time great, he’d need to fit a lot more wins into his prime.
In this game, unfair expectations abound. But then again…not really.
* * *
“I have three daughters that are now 25, 23, and 21, they never showed any interest in the game at all, until one day Adam Scott won the Players Championship. Then all of a sudden, they said, ‘Dad, can we meet Adam?’ ”
—Commissioner TIM FINCHEM
Whenever I see Scott in the flesh, I think of a Beatles lyric:
“Got to be good looking ’cause he’s so hard to see.”
Scott is a kind person (and a smart one), but he speaks so quietly, and with such a measured cadence, that it’s easy to come away without a solid impression. A fellow journalist captured the feeling best when he told me that after he’d conducted a solo interview with Scott, he left discouraged, certain it had been a dud. It was only later, when he transcribed the talk, that he realized Scott had given him pure gold.
It was a feeling I could relate to, at least from press conferences. It’s hard to appreciate the intelligence and insight of what he’s saying in the moment, because it feels so reserved. From his body language, you get the sense that he’s withholding something, and that the real Adam Scott is hidden somewhere behind the words. It takes a bit of time and distance to see that you were wrong, at least about the content. As far as his demeanor, the impression remains—he is guarding his privacy, you think, fighting a cold war against anyone who wants to break down the walls.
So what is he really like? That’s a question I tried to answer all year, but his agents wouldn’t let me anywhere near him in a one-on-one setting. Even if they had, I can’t imagine what deeper truths I could have unearthed that others hadn’t already tried and failed to find. Adam Scott simply doesn’t slip.
I know that he has a beautiful swing that often drew comparisons to Tiger Woods in his early days. I know that women love him—you read anecdotes everywhere from SI to Esquire about the lengths women go to for his attention—sending panties to be autographed, fighting over his discarded banana peels, and God knows what else. Even Tim Finchem’s daughters are in on the act.
I know he makes around eight million dollars annually—off the course—which in 2013 made him the fifth-highest earner among active players behind Rory McIlroy, Henrik Stenson, Phil, and Tiger. I know he has a philosophical side—when asked about the Eisenhower Tree’s demise, he said, “Anything that lives will eventually die, I guess, and this one maybe early.” I know he likes wine—he was excited for his fellow golfers to try his selection at the champions’ dinner at Augusta—and I know he carries himself with a dignified reserve, but that he’s generous and empathetic in his rare public moments.
Beyond these impressions, I never learned very much, and I get the sense that although many like and respect Scott, the list of people who really know him is quite small. Even the man’s marriage was conducted with extreme privacy; nobody in the public eye even realized he had wed his longtime girlfriend, Swedish architect Marie Kojzar, until weeks later, when he mentioned a secret ceremony in the Bahamas to an Aussie reporter. He invited some friends, but he didn’t even tell them what sort of event they’d be attending—they only learned it was a wedding when, and if, they arrived. Justin Rose, probably Scott’s best friend on Tour, declined the party invitation, having no idea what he was about to miss.
His reserved nature extends to all walks of life. It’s very difficult, for example, to get much sense of his childhood. He was born in Adelaide, on the south side of Australia off the Gulf St. Vincent inlet, and played his first round there at age four. The family moved to Queensland’s Sunshine Coast when Adam was seven, when his father, Phil, landed a job as the golf pro at a resort called Twin Waters. He worked in the town of Maroochyadore manufacturing clubs—he had considered a playing career himself, but a motorcycle accident at age nineteen finished that dream—and his wife, Pam, worked in a “uniform shop” at a school.
Pam’s mother came from Wales, and Phil had roots in England, but their son was 100 percent Aussie. In Queensland, he went to school at the Matthew Flinders Anglican College in Buderim, and later the famous Kooralbyn International School.
Scott modeled his game after Greg Norman’s from the time he was seven years old, and first broke 70 and beat his dad at age thirteen. He went on to play junior golf in and around the Gold Coast in Queensland, and came to represent both his state and country in international competitions. All the while, he idolized the Shark, and was glued to the television whenever Norman contended at a major, even if that meant rising in the predawn on a Monday morning to watch the final round at Augusta.
After a stellar junior career, he decided to head for the States, where he attended UNLV for roughly eighteen months starting in 1998, the year after the Rebels won the national championship. This is a part of the Adam Scott story that many people don’t know, and that obfuscation seems purposeful. Details are murky, but there was some sort of disagreement between him and coach Dwaine Knight when Scott decided to turn pro. Since then, he’s resisted any overt ties to the school. He did, however, join a fraternity, and in November 1999 he golfed with Bill Clinton. He also met Butch Harmon, the man who would coach him for the next decade.
A couple of top tens as an amateur on the European Tour in early 2000 convinced him to make the leap to the professional ranks, and after a rough year spent between the PGA and European Tours, he came out the next season, at age twenty, and won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in January. He won twice more in Europe in 2002, won the Deutsche Bank Championship for his first PGA Tour win the next year, and made a splash in his first full season on the PGA Tour by winning the Players Championship in ’04.
That was his biggest title yet, but he nearly blew it—with a two-shot lead on the 18th, he found the water on his second shot, and had to go up-and-down from forty yards to save bogey and win by a stroke. Even with the sloppy finish, the win turned him into a golf celebrity, and vaulted him into the top fifteen of the world rankings, where he’d remain through the end of 2008.
By this time, he was dating Marie Kojzar, whom he first met when she served as nanny for Thomas Bjorn’s children, and living with her between Australia and London. He’d built his dream home on the gold coast in Queensland, and he also owned a place in Switzerland—in the same town as Sergio Garcia—that enabled him to escape Australian taxes.
—
The only things missing were those pesky majors. Aside from a T-3 at the PGA Championship in 2006, he never really came close to winning, and he missed a surprising number of cuts for one of the world’s elite golfers.
On his first trip to Augusta, he played a practice round with Norman. When the older Aussie poured out a stream of water on the 16th green, Scott was amazed to watch it trickle all the way off the green, never sinking into the grass. The atmosphere felt charged and tense that day, and perhaps the feeling persisted to the other majors. Whether it was intimidation, nerves, or just bad luck, he couldn’t seem to muster his usual talent at the year’s biggest events.
By 2008, the whispers had reached full volume—was he tough enough to win the big tournaments? As far back as 2003, he’d faced questions about his so-called “killer instinct,” which even his coach, Harmon, had called into question. The comparison to Tiger went through its own evolution—in the early 2000s, the media had focused on whether he would challenge Tiger for world dominance. By the middle of the decade, he was being asked whether the pressure of trying to fill Tiger’s shoes kept him from achieving his best results. And by the end of the decade, the questions disappeared entirely. He might challenge Woods for number 1 someday, but his window to reach the American’s extreme level of greatness had already passed—he would never win majors at anywhere near the same rate.
* * *
Q. I think it was here last year somebody was asking you about whethe
r or not you were too nice out there. Have you gotten any meaner in the ensuing year?
ADAM SCOTT: I don’t know, you tell me. I mean, yeah, I think it’s an inner thing. You’ve got to be mean inside. Some of my experiences over the last year have showed me how these big guys really have to have burning fire inside of them just to squash everybody else out there, and I think you have to have that or they’ll do it to you. I’ll be ready to go tomorrow. I’ll be Mr. Tough Guy tomorrow (laughter).
—Players Championship, 2004
In some ways, you could look at Scott as part of a lost generation. There’s an old quote from him at the ’04 Booz Allen Classic—where he beat Charles Howell III—identifying himself, Howell, and Sergio Garcia as the best players under twenty-five. A decade later, only Scott would hold a major championship, while Howell had essentially dropped off the map and Garcia bounced from crisis to crisis.
Most players in their mid-thirties today who have excelled in major championships are not the ones anybody expected—Bubba Watson and Jason Dufner came from nowhere—while the child stars either flamed out, spent a career floundering under pressure, or bloomed far later than expectations, like Scott and Justin Rose. It’s almost as if Tiger Woods’s star was so bright that anybody within five years had no chance to shine—greatness skipped a generation, falling instead on the likes of Martin Kaymer and Rory McIlroy, while old-timers like Ernie Els and Mickelson scooped up any stray majors left hanging around.
Still, by any normal standard, Scott found great early success, and his first real stumble didn’t come until 2008. After winning the Byron Nelson, a series of events shattered his focus, beginning with the end of his seven-year relationship with Kojzar. Unlike many Tour wives, who build their lives around their husbands and serve a sort of auxiliary role, Kojzar had ambitions of her own—she studied architecture—and the constant travel put a strain on the couple that eventually drove them apart.
Shortly after the breakup, Scott broke his hand in a freak accident when a friend slammed it in a car door, and became so sick with a recurring fever and throat troubles that he had to take antibiotics and steroids just to be able to play—and sometimes, to breathe.
His results suffered for a year, as Scott split from Butch Harmon and only returned to the winner’s circle at the 2010 Valero Texas Open. In 2011, he nabbed Steve Williams, Tiger’s old caddie, and together they won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational that August. That elevated Scott back into the world top ten, and with his career rebound complete, he turned his eye to the majors. Slowly but surely, his play improved.
Finally, at the 2012 British Open at Royal Lytham & St. Anne’s, he took a four-shot lead into the final round. This, it seemed, would be his big breakthrough.
He was shaky on Sunday’s front nine, finishing with a two-over-par 36 on a difficult day, but his nearest competitors faltered as well. With a birdie on 14, he got back to -10, and held a four-shot lead over Ernie Els. The tournament looked all but over with four holes to play, but then Scott suffered through the same kind of nightmarish collapse he had watched his hero endure as a child. With three straight bogeys, he sank to -7. Els birdied the last hole to tie him at that number, and the sure victory had dissolved into thin air.
With just the final hole to play, Scott put his tee shot into the bunker, laid up into the fairway, and hit his approach to eight feet. The mistake put him in a horrifying position—now he needed to sink a tough par putt just to force a playoff. He tried to gather himself, but this meltdown wasn’t meant to have a happy ending. He missed, and Els took home an unlikely Claret Jug.
It was the sad Australian narrative playing out all over again, and after answering the same old questions for years, Scott was devastated at missing his chance to finally win the big one. He responded to the situation with grace—he had learned from Norman’s example all those years ago—but he knew that everyone who had called him a choker before had more ammunition, and the pressure would only mount.
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By April 2013, he was back with Kojzar—now a full-fledged architect. On the course, he did his best to maintain his focus, and was lucky enough to get his next shot at major glory at the 2013 Masters, less than a year after his British collapse.
Trailing by a shot heading into Sunday, he turned on the burners, and finished an excellent day by sinking a twenty-five-foot birdie putt on 18. In the background, showing how much the tournament meant to Australia, his playing partner and fellow Aussie Marc Leishman pumped his fist as Scott roared in celebration. They both thought it was a winner, too—right up until the moment when Angel Cabrera came up in the final group and stuck his approach to three feet. He made his birdie, and Scott’s work continued.
Rain fell on the second playoff hole, no. 10. Scott bombed another tee shot, getting a great downhill bounce, and Cabrera matched him again. In the valley, with the sky darkening, Cabrera hit a 6-iron that stopped just below the hole. From 196 yards, Scott did him one better, finishing hole high and fifteen feet away. Cabrera’s birdie putt missed by inches, and the Argentine flipped his club in the air in frustration. It left Scott with a putt to win the green jacket, and bury a national curse, along with his own demons, for good. Behind him, the rain poured down, and Williams stood next to Cabrera, both men with their hands on their hips. Scott anchored the putter in his chest, breathed deeply, and swung.
The ball seemed to linger forever on the green, but finally it dropped. The roar from the greenside mob eclipsed his own as he leaned back and screamed to the sky.
—
The only hiccup through the rest of that season came at the Australian Open in November, when Scott entered the 18th hole a stroke up on Rory McIlroy. The Northern Irishman had fought back from four strokes behind on the day, and on the 18th hole, Scott bogeyed while McIlroy holed a ten-foot birdie putt to steal a dramatic victory.
The result stunned the fans in Sydney, and it ate at Scott—he badly wanted to complete his season with a win at home, and finish off the triple crown he had started by winning the Australian Masters and PGA.
At the time, there was no way to know that we were watching a blueprint for what would happen in 2014—all anyone knew was that Rory had just won his only tournament of the year, and maybe it meant he could rediscover his old form. Maybe.
In the meantime, Scott ascended to number 1, and set his eyes on Colonial and the Texas slam.
—
Scott had his chances to reach -10 and win the tournament outright—twenty feet on the 15th, thirty-two feet on the 16th, thirty-six feet on the 17th, thirty feet on the 18th—but none of the attempts were great, and he took his pars and moved on. As he made his way to the final green, a clanking sound came from the manual scoreboard by the water, where a metal tile was replaced with another—it was down to Dufner and Scott.
After making his par, with the skies darkening, Scott gave his tired standard bearer an autographed ball. He walked past the statue of Ben Hogan, told CBS’s Peter Kostis that he could use “a couple of bottles of wine to go,” and drove with Steve Williams to a low brick building with a sign on the front that read “caddie registration.” They sat for a bit on a couch, feet on the green felt carpet, watching a television feed of the tournament. A television crew lurked in the doorway. He and Williams soon appeared on the screen, which created an odd tableau—there they sat, watching themselves on a seven-second delay. That spurred Scott to action, and he and Williams fled.
Dufner was already on the range, and the two didn’t exchange so much as a nod while they hit on opposite sides, moving from short irons to long irons to driver. Back on 18, Dufner—looking miserable as always—reached into a hat and drew out the number one. The two major winners shook hands, and both ripped their drives into the center of the fairway.
Dufner’s eyes drifted to the clouds, more menacing by the second, and both players hit wedges to safe spots on the green. When they moved down the fairway, the first chants of “U-S-A” descended from the galleries, now well-oil
ed from a day of drinking in the sun.
It was pars all around, and then on to 17, where the impending afternoon storm brought an early darkness. After a safe shot into the fairway, Scott’s approach flew straight at the flag, stopping in the fringe fourteen feet past the hole. As Dufner stood over his ball, his caddie threw four fingers down into the ground at a CBS spotter, who made the same gesture to David Feherty across the fairway: 9-iron. He made his best shot of the day—the ball sailed over a greenside bunker and stopped four feet from the hole. In the stands behind the green, the gallery shouted chaotically before organizing themselves into another U-S-A chant.
With a short, uphill putt awaiting Dufner, Scott knew his putt had to go down. As he stood over the ball, a train whistle blew in the distance, so he backed off and began the routine anew. He straddled his ball, legs wide like a colossus, and held his fingers in a V. When he was ready, he struck his putt and watched it move down the hill.
It curled left as it neared the hole, caught the right edge, and dropped. There was defiance in Scott’s fist pump, and in the clenched muscles of his face. Dufner tapped in his own birdie and exhaled with relief as it fell—with him, there’s no such thing as a gimme—they were off to 18 again.
Scott’s 3-wood was identical to the one he’d struck moments earlier; the ball came to rest two feet from his previous divot. Dufner’s drive stopped short of Scott’s, and the reigning PGA Champion had his first hiccup of the playoffs as he flirted with the bunkers on his approach and left the ball almost forty feet from the hole.