Adam Scott Is Trending Up Yet Again

Adam Scott possesses one of golf’s more enviable swings. His ball-striking is excellent and only his putting challenges him these days. Yet, he appears to have figured out the flat stick mysteries and looked great down the stretch to win the Genesis Invitational.

GolfDigest.com’s Shane Ryan caught up with Scott to find out why the needle is strongly pointing north once again.  

It’s the fourth true surge of his career. The first happened at the outset, when he embarked on a gradual climb from being a merely a curiosity among golf cognoscenti, propelled by his 2004 Players Championship victory. He won steadily after that and stayed inside the world top 10 until 2008, when he began a fall—spurred on by a break-up with his longtime girlfriend (now his wife), a freak injury to his hand and recurring illness—that would drop him to No. 76 by the fall 2009.

The second climb took a couple years, but in 2013 Scott won the Masters and in 2014 he reached World No. 1 for the first time. The next dip was more modest, and when he emerged from that mini-slump and won twice on the PGA Tour early in 2016 (Climb No. 3), there was talk of the old Scott returning to finish what he had started. Contrary to prophecy, those would be the last Tour events he’d win until the Genesis last weekend. And as he makes his way into the major season this year, he’ll have to prove that this is more than just another false spring, that the latest resurgence is something more profound.

Scott’s strokes gained/around the green ranking shows similar improvement: 83rd in 2016, T-91 in 2017, T-64 in 2018, 10th in 2019 and eighth so far in 2020.

The game is always better when marquee names are contending. Glad to see the gentlemanly Aussie is back in the fray.