Former Masters champion, Adam Scott is just fine being the favourite entering this week’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship, in fact he believes such can provide positive impetus to his chances of coming out on top come Sunday evening when the sun sets over Port Royal Golf Course.
Having a green jacket already safely tucked away in the Champions locker room at Augusta National Golf Club, the Australian legend long ago learned how to harness the pressures of high expectation and formulate and apply such in ways that enhance his chances of achieving the mission.
As of Tuesday most oddsmakers had stamped the 43-year-old as the betting favourite with one posting the Aussie, who has previously won the now defunct Grand Slam of Golf at the venue, at +1600 — Draft Kings has Scott as its favourite at 14-1.
“I think it’s a nice thing,” said Scott when asked if being favoured might be burdensome. “At many different times in my career I’ve come to events as the favorite or world number one, in good form and with expectations being high and that’s kind of what I like.
“It’s the environment I want to be in and if that’s the case this week I feel like I’m the best player here.
“I find pressure like that something you can feed off the expectations a little bit.”
The day saw Scott spend extended time out reaquainting himself with the course, one that has been softened by several days of rain. And with such having now departed and mostly clear skies predicted, the former World No. 1, envisioned plenty of low scores when the competition begins in earnest on Thursday.
He told of the characteristics of the course to be similar to those upon which he learned and honed his craft Down Under on the Gold Coast, all but salivating over his prospects.
“I’ve played a lot of this resort style golf as a kid growing up on the Gold Coast,” explained Scott, whose last PGA Tour event triumph came in 2020 at The Genisis Invitational, played at the Riviera Country Club in California. “I call this resort style golf, but the grass here is similar to that bck home.
“I think it’s helpful around here if you strike the ball well. It’s hard scrambling a lot out of the rough and with the wind blowing I think that feels like home a bit as well, so I certainly enjoy playing in resort style tropical weather.
“It certainly feels like home to me.
“I will spend the next couple of days getting used to the condition of the golf course, the grass, the tee to the greens.” “There’s a lot of movement on the golf course and some subtleties on the greens which you really have to pay attention to.
“The greens are soft, so I think there’s going to be some really good scoring.
“I feel like I have played fairly solid all year and not gotten results and I’m not going to get results sitting home on the couch and I think it would be nice to get a good result here and get my PGA season going and try to improve my standing and got a position in a couple of the signature events.”
Asked if he was incentivised to get into the Next 10 that would place him in the 51 to 60 group, which would guarantee spots in the Genisis and AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the 14-time PGA Tour winner responded in the affirmative.
“It would be nice to get into those two,” he said. “I would not ask for an invite, but I’m at a point in my life where I have to balance my schedule.
“Being a bit older I can’t chase everything, so if it would happen it’s good but if it doesn’t it doesn’t. I don’t expect to be given invites all over the place.
“Next year I’ll plan the best schedule I can and if I can get a couple of invites that’ll be great, but it’ll be much better to go out and win a tournament this week and get some of the results out of what I put into the game and the kind of changes that I’ve made this year and going to next year full of confidence.”
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