The question was supposed to be straightforward.
With Australian Adam Scott preparing to make yet another Presidents Cup appearance, was there a feeling among the International Team that it wanted to win one for the old guy?
International Captain Geoff Ogilvy needed a little clarification.
“Who’s the old guy?”
Adam.
“Oh, yeah.”
The exchange drew a laugh, but the premise was serious. At 46, Scott is the elder statesman of the International Team, a 14-time PGA Tour winner, a Masters champion and former world No. 1. He has made 101 consecutive starts in major championships and, this week, will tie American Phil Mickelson’s record with his 12th Presidents Cup appearance.
Scott first played in the event in 2003. A remarkable 23 years later, he is still
ranked 45th in the world, coming off a runner-up finish at the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA Championship last week and chasing the same thing he was chasing as a rookie: a Presidents Cup victory over the United States.
He has played in every edition since 2003 — 12 teams, 54 matches and a career record of 20-28-6, more Presidents Cup losses than combined losses by all U.S. team members (26). The International team has lost 10 of those competitions and tied one. That makes Scott's longevity difficult to separate from the International team's history in this lopsided biennial competition.
“He's part of the international furniture now,” South African Christiaan Bezuidenhout said. “All of us would love to win the Cup, but it would be so much more special if we can do it while Adam is still in the team as well.”
For Scott, the Presidents Cup has become something more than another line on an already decorated resume. It has become an unfinished chapter. The memories stretch back to that first appearance in 2003, when Scott was the young buck in a room filled with established stars and four future Hall of Famers in Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Nick Price and Vijay Singh. The competition ended in a tie at Fancourt in South Africa after darkness halted a playoff between Els and Tiger Woods.
“What an atmosphere,” Scott recalled. “Tiger in the middle of his prime there, coming down to a playoff. I remember walking with Mike Weir and we were sitting above the second green where it all kind of ended, and Mike's like, ‘I'm so nervous right now. I'm way more nervous than when I won the Masters.’ He wasn't even playing.”
Two decades later, Scott is no longer the kid watching the stars. He is the veteran with the silky smooth swing that the younger players watch and look up to.
“A lot of these kids weren't even playing golf in 2003,” said Ogilvy, and to his point, 21-year-old U.S. Presidents Cup rookie Jackson Koivun wasn’t even born at the time. “Yeah, he's a big inspiration. It's a cool journey he's taken.”
That journey is part of what makes Scott's Presidents Cup record so bewildering. He has been an automatic qualifier 11 times, earning his lone captain's pick in 2009 at TPC Harding Park. His 54 matches are second-most in Presidents Cup history, behind only Mickelson's 55, a figure he’s sure to surpass this week. It boggles the mind that a competition that has been so close to his heart continues to be unrequited love.
“Certainly, you would have thought if you were going to play all 12 in a row from 2003, that he would have won one by now,” Ogilvy said. “So, it would be fantastic for the team, and I know everybody feels that way, that he's a big part of the inspiration they want to win for.”
Scott came painfully close in 2015 in South Korea, a one-point loss that went down to the wire, and again in 2019 in his native Australia. The Internationals jumped to a 9-5 lead and carried an advantage into Sunday singles at Royal Melbourne, putting themselves in position to win the Cup for the first time since 1998. They couldn't close it out, falling by a score of 16-14, with Scott among those who failed to bring home a critical point.
“I felt like I'd let the side down,” Scott said. “That one slipped through our fingers. It was months and months and months of trying to figure out how it slipped away because it felt like that was going to be our time. It would have been an epic victory to win there. It's something that I'm still looking for in my career.”
That search continues in earnest this week at Medinah No. 3 with the International Team again heavy underdogs. Scott argues that the competition hasn’t been as one-sided as the record may indicate, claiming the margins in Presidents Cup matches can be razor thin. A team can find itself on the wrong side of a handful of crucial holes and suddenly a close contest becomes a lopsided score.
“I feel like the U.S. team wins the last couple of holes in matches very often when they're close,” Scott said. “Even though the score line can look big at the end of the week, it's like the 18th and 17th holes goes in their favor and not ours often enough.”
He sees a similar dynamic when watching the European team in the Ryder Cup.
“I feel like the 17th and 18th holes goes in Europe's favor,” he mused.
For Scott, those closing holes represent more than just the final moments of another team competition. They are the difference between another near miss and the achievement he has spent more than two decades chasing. Win one for The Gipper? It’s been re-cast as win one for the Old Guy.
“If we can get across the line and win, I think it's going to change the whole perception of the event,” Scott said.
Adam Schupak is a senior writer for Golfweek, covering the PGA Tour and the business of golf.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Win one for 'the old guy: Adam Scott seeks first Presidents Cup win at age 46
