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Scott continues Texas love affair
Mon, 17 May 2010Scott continues Texas love affair
BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2010 Valero Texas Open | Round Four | 17 May 2010
Adam Scott’s last three PGA Tour victories have come in Texas, today’s one shot win over Fredrik Jacobson adding the Valero Texas Open title to his wins in Houston and Dallas.
36 holes were required on Sunday after day two had been abandoned as a result of poor weather. Scott’s start to his morning round today gave no indication of what was to come. Two bogeys in his first three holes had him at 1 under for the tournament and at that stage he was a long way from the 36 hole leaders.
From that point on however it was all one way traffic for the 29 year old. Scott birdied his fifth hole in round three then drove the green at his 8th hole and holed it from 15 feet for eagle. He rushed home to complete his back nine in 31 and as he headed into this afternoon’s final round he was right on the heels of the leaders.
Scott continued where he left off when he stepped out in his final round. He made the turn in 32 which meant that over those particular nine holes on Sunday he had recorded a score of 63 (he had started on the 10th in the morning round).
Further birdies at the 10th and 12th and he was four ahead of Jacobsen and just when it appeared things were settled, Jacobsen birdied the 12th and 15th and when Scott bogeyed the par five 18th from the middle of the fairway the difference was just one.
Try as he might Jacobson was unable to secure the one extra birdie he needed to force a playoff and the title was essentially Scott’s. I say essentially as there were still one or two players on the golf course that could well have made a difference but their task proved too great.
Scott had to wait for more than an hour for confirmation of his victory but it was worth the wait. His 7th official PGA Tour victory was worth US$1,098,000 and takes his PGA Tour career earnings to more than US$20.5 million. Those seven victories do not include the unofficial win at the weather shortened Nissan Open in 2005.
Scott puts his victory down to a putting lesson from the man who is developing a reputation for turning short games around. David Stockton, one of the great putters in the game during his playing days and now a putting coach for Phil Mickelson, saw Scott at the Quail Hollow Championship and suggested he could help him.
“David said he could fix it (his putting) in 15 minutes,” said Scott.
“It might have taken 30 minutes but it has made a difference. It was about the left wrist and once I had worked on that it allowed me to get into the putt more rather than thinking about what is happening down below. I really got into the rythym of it this week and it felt really good.”
The statistics tell the story with Scott holing all but one of the more than 50 putts under five foot that he looked at all week. That is a significantly different story to that of his game in recent years.
“I was really struggling with my putting and that was beginning to bleed into the rest of my game.”
Scott has been playing very well from tee to green for some time including when he led those stats at the Masters but the putter, as has been the case for much of his career, has created its share of problems. If the improvement that he has shown in that area of the game this week continues then the sky could be the limit for the gifted Gold Coaster.
Interestingly Scott is not entered for next week’s HP Byron Nelson Championship; an event he won in 2008.
Jacobson finished runner up with Aaron Baddeley, Ernie Els and Jimmy Walker one shot further back in third position.
Aron Price and James Nitties finished 17th in what were good weeks for them, Cameron Percy and Matt Jones 22nd, Marc Leishman 30th, Jarrod Lyle 41st, Steve Elkington 45th and Mark Hensby 53rd.
