{"id":825,"date":"2011-03-12T21:08:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T04:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidhbarrett.com\/?p=825"},"modified":"2012-03-06T07:27:27","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T14:27:27","slug":"quick-turnaround-for-adam-scott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/golf\/personalities\/825\/quick-turnaround-for-adam-scott","title":{"rendered":"Quick Turnaround for Adam Scott"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It took only a week for Adam Scott to get it together. Copyright Icon SMI. <\/p><\/div>\n

I posted last week<\/a> about the terrible play of Adam Scott and Camilo Villegas in 2011 and especially at the Honda Classic, where neither of them shot better than a 77. Here we are just seven days later and Scott is in contention through 54 holes at the WGC-Cadillac Championship, just three strokes off the lead with a 10-under 206 total. <\/p>\n

I noted a week ago that Scott played well for 14 holes at the Honda before dumping two balls in the water on the 15th and making a quintuple bogey followed by a double bogey two holes later, and wondered if maybe he simply lost his focus after that and wasn\u2019t necessarily in a hopeless state despite shooting 77-82. Apparently that was the case, but I\u2019m still surprised to see him on the leaderboard the very next week. (Villegas also has returned to at least some measure of respectability this week, opening with 71-71-73.) <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good reminder of how quickly things can turn around in golf. That\u2019s good to keep in mind the next time you hear somebody say, \u201cThere\u2019s no way Tiger Woods can win the way he\u2019s playing now.\u201d There\u2019s always a way for somebody to win next<\/em> week no matter how they\u2019re struggling this week. There are plenty of instances of players missing the cut and then going on to win their next tournament. <\/p>\n

As for Scott, he\u2019s driven the ball better than anybody so far at Doral. He leads the field in fairways hit with 30 of 42, unusual for such a long hitter. He\u2019s also tied for third in greens in regulation with 41 of 54. Putting is generally Scott\u2019s weakness, but he switched to a long putter a few weeks ago and it\u2019s working fairly well this week. Through three rounds he has gained two strokes over Tour average putting from the distances he has faced\u2014not great, but slightly-better-than-average is much better than Scott\u2019s norm. <\/p>\n

Putting helped save Scott from his one near disaster this week. After hitting four balls into the water on par 3s last week (and six in all), he again found a hazard in the first round on the par-3 9th hole at Doral (his 18th). But he holed a 24-foot putt to save a bogey. That\u2019s one of five putts he\u2019s made longer than 10 feet in the first three rounds. <\/p>\n

Scott is putting better than Woods, who is tied for 30th after rounds of 70-74-70. Woods is putting three strokes worse than a Tour average performance over the first three rounds. <\/p>\n

The one bright spot for Woods is iron play. He\u2019s 8th in greens in regulation through three rounds and has left himself 26 birdie or eagle putts inside 20 feet. He has converted only seven of those. He has nine birdies in all, including a two-putt after hitting a par 5 in two and a hole-out from the fringe, but that ranks only 42nd. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, his driving his been wild, hitting only 18 of 42 fairways. What\u2019s more, he hit two horrid tee shots on Friday, a low snap hook that traveled only 122 yards and a pop-up that went 188. Those were a clear indication that his swing change is still a work in progress\u2014but, as Scott is showing this week, not a sign that he can\u2019t get it together soon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I posted last week about the terrible play of Adam Scott and Camilo Villegas in 2011 and especially at the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,2980,252524,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-news","category-pga-tour-2","category-personalities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2011\/03\/Scott2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1548,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions\/1548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}