lign="left" />
EDISON, NEW JERSEY: Adam Scott admitted there has been “a lot of fiddling” after seeing his US PGA Tour season ended on a disappointing low in the Barclays Championship today.
Scott posted poor scores of 71 and 73 to miss the cut at the Plainfield County Club and his 13th PGA Tour year by two strokes.
And despite PGA Tour earnings this year of $US1.382million, it is Scott’s poorest finish FedEx Cup result since he was 110th on the 2009 money list, and in the inaugural year of the Cup.
Scott contested his mandatory 15 events in the 2014/15 schedule with a best finish of T4th in the WGC Cadillac Championship and a similar result in the US Open.
But while it’s been a year in which he proudly became a father, it’s also been a year of uncertainty, or as Scott suggests, “fiddling”, inside the ropes for the 35-year old.
“Fiddling” with continuing undecision on a full-time caddie to replace Kiwi Steve Williams along with “fiddling” in switching back, before the January 1 deadline, to an unanchored putter.
“I really need to just get everything back in place and back into the slot and get some consistency,” he said.
“There’s been a lot of fiddling with lots of different things, caddies, equipment, everything this year – including starting a new family.
“And I now have to get everything to fall back into place and refocus and come up with a better plan.
“Also at the moment I am a bit frustrated with the putter as my putting stats have not been good this year and I look forward to next year in doing something I can't be questioned about and moving forward and not having to deal with that issue so much.
“So looking back I made a lot of adjustments this year and I need to take stock of where things are and make a good plan.”
Having played just 15 events this year and sitting out the remaining three events in the FedEx Cup playoffs, it would be easy for Scott to consider playing elsewhere but he declined to entertain that notion.
“I don’t plan to add any more tournaments to my schedule and I will continue to play the Presidents Cup, Japan Open, HSBC and Australian Open,” he said.
“Looking back on these two days, it’s just that I left myself a lot of work to do around a course that you need everything to go right for you.
“A couple of bad shots out here and you are going to get punished and I think everyone is having trials and tribulations around the greens.
“And I guess it’s the nature of this game as it’s very hard to be consistent for your whole career.
“I have played the last four years relatively well and clearly I am trying to continue to play well as I am not playing that poorly.
“But sometimes it is harder to score than others and it seems to be the case at the moment.
“So this game is still also very much a learning curve because when something changes you have to change as well to balance it out, and I found it hard to kind to get in balance with anything this year.”
After Williams’ decision to retire as a full-time caddie late last year, Scott signed on Mike Kerr, who had been carrying with some success for England’s Lee Westwood.
But Scott and Kerr didn’t gel and when the majors came around, Scott managed to twist Williams’ arm and drag him out of retirement for the last three majors and WGC Bridgestone Invitational that the pair had won together in 2011.
But that arrangement ended two weeks ago with Scott turning to long-time coach Brad Malone to carry the clubs last week at the Wyndham Championship.
This week he got permission from Ernie Els to “borrow” his long-time caddie Ricci Roberts, again as a stand-in measure for the playoffs.
“I was happy with how my season was going considering but there was all those other things changing throughout the year like having to adjust schedules in relations to caddies and what not, like who is available and who is not, and how it was all going down,” he said.
“Through to The Open I have played only two of nine weeks and clearly that is not the ideal schedule but being sharp coming to America, especially when my focus was playing golf and not playing a golf course like the US Open or The Open because it’s not like playing here or at Akron, or Whistling Straits for that matter.
“So really I was just not ready as I hadn’t played enough. I struggled from Akron through to here.”
Of course, Scott did not start his 2016 season until the first week in March in contesting the WGC Cadillac Championship, purely because his wife was giving birth to their first child.
But looking ahead to 2016 Scott will get back to start the new year as before – and that’s traditionally in Hawaii.
“It is a different looking Tour schedule next year and slightly in the summer but I won’t start as late as this year as starting at Doral was exceptional circumstances,” he said.
“So I would like to play a little earlier.
“Normally, I would like to play Kapalua and the Sony but they are the choices you make at the time and my wife and I thought we should stay together through the last months of her pregnancy and not go off travelling to play golf and then go back and play soon after the birth.
“That was the call I made at the time and it while it hurt me, I am not going to question that call.”