It’s January 15th and Adam Scott and I are on the back of the driving range at Emirates Golf Club, in Dubai. It’s the Monday of the Dubai Desert Classic, which is the start of Scott’s season. He just posed for a bunch of photos for the March issue of GOLF Magazine and has been cooly strolling from one topic to the next.
LIV golfer Joaquin Niemann drops by our seats to say hello and playfully ask Adam why he’s still talking to this journalist. Joaco isn’t necessarily wrong. Scott and I have been yapping for 45 minutes now, and it’s nearly lunch o’clock. Only we’ve got one more pressing topic to discuss: the upcoming Presidents Cup.
It may have been eight months away at the time, but the topic of major team golf competitions is ripe for conjecture at any point in the year. In part because it has been more than two decades since the Internationals won this team competition against the United States, but also because Scott witnessed the Ryder Cup in Rome. It was just three-months fresh at that point, and due to the result — a dominant victory by Team Europe — it was still being litigated in headlines, press conferences, even the Full Swing documentary. On the driving range in Dubai, where the only American Ryder Cupper in the field was Brian Harman, the referendum on Team USA was still alive.
“One of these years,” I told Scott, then a 10-time International team member, “you guys are going to knock off that American team and it is going to freak people out.”
He agreed. Whether it was with the notion of an impending International victory or that it would send shockwaves through their opponents, Scott had clearly given it plenty of thought. And his gut instinct was to blame himself.
“Look, I think I need to be quite critical on myself,” Scott said that day. “I think it’s coming. I think the team the last two Cups has moved in a fantastic direction. I have to be a leader by winning four and a half points. Not [going] 2-2. That ain’t getting it done.”
Unfortunately for him, he’s right. Scott will tee it up this week at his 11th (consecutive!) Presidents Cup, making him by far the most experienced pro in the field. Now 44 years old, the last time the Internationals took anything but a loss in this event, he was a 23-year-old rookie playing alongside peak-of-his-powers Ernie Els.
Scott went 3-2 that week, in a team tie. Two years later he starred again, going 3-1-1, undefeated until a singles match against Jim Furyk. But ever since, he’s failed to win more matches than he’s lost, playing in 49 of 50 sessions in his career. There isn’t a golfer on the planet who has played (and continues to play) more for his side than Scott for the Internationals, but we’re still on the back of that driving range addressing one of the ultimate truisms of team sports: it doesn’t matter how well you play as an individual unless the team wins. So Scott continues gazing into the mirror.
