Musings: Scott claims Byron Nelson victory

His fluid, powerful swing has sparked comparisons to Tiger Woods, as has his relationship with superstar teacher Butch Harmon, who went so far as to call him the “most likely to challenge” El Tigre. But Adam Scott has always given off an underachiever’s vibe.

Maybe it’s his lackluster record in the major championships. Scott has posted only four top-10s in 28 appearances in majors. He’s missed the cut in four of the last six U.S. Opens.

But occasionally, Scott tantalizes us with glimpses of his awesome potential. This weekend’s EDS Byron Nelson was just such an occasion, even if he did try to give it away down the stretch.

Scott blew a three-stroke lead with some sloppy moments, while Ryan Moore was forging a solid 68 in blustery, cool conditions that tampered with club selection and players’ nerves. What began as a day for a reputation-enhancing statement to the rest of the Tour turned into a fight for survival for Scott, who closed with a 1-over 71 and needed a three-hole playoff to earn his sixth career win.

“In the end, I think (the statement) was to myself, I could actually win it when things weren’t going my way,” Scott said. “But it wasn’t quite the statement I had in mind. I would have liked to have gone out there and have played like Ryan played and won by a few.”

Scott did hit some clutch shots when he needed them, and he calmly drained an eight-foot birdie putt to force the playoff before slamming home a 48-footer on the third playoff hole to win.

“I got away with one today,” said the 27-year-old Scott, who became the seventh player in his 20s to win on Tour this year. “A bit lucky.”

We’ll see if his luck, and his talent, hold as the Players and U.S. Open approach.

Byron Nelson News and Notes

• Adam Scott’s win gives him victories in three consecutive seasons. Here are the players riding a current streak of at least three years with one or more victories:

Player	Consecutive Years With a Win
Tiger Woods	13
Vijay Singh	6
Phil Mickelson	5
K.J. Choi	4
Adam Scott	3
Jim Furyk	3

The record in this category is shared by Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, who both won in 17 consecutive seasons on Tour, Palmer from 1955-71 and Nicklaus from 1962-78. Billy Casper won in 16 consecutive seasons (1956-71).

• He ain’t Tiger Woods when it comes to slamming doors shut on his competitors, but Scott is compiling a nice closing percentage. With the Byron Nelson win, Scott has now won five of the seven tournaments he’s led through 54 holes. His only losses came at the 2006 Byron Nelson (T3) and at the 2007 Stanford St. Jude Championship, where a final-round 75 left him seventh.

• Ryan Moore arrived on the PGA Tour with a level of fanfare and anticipation that golf hadn’t seen since Tiger Woods’ ascendancy in 1996. Today, 70 tournaments into his PGA Tour career, the comparison doesn’t really hold up. Woods won in his fifth professional start. Conversely, after 70 starts on the PGA Tour, Moore is still searching for that first win. He’s getting close, though, and it would seem to be a matter of time before the onetime phenom realizes his massive potential.

Moore was a four-time All-American at UNLV who joined Woods in the unusual step of skipping qualifying school and going straight from college to the Tour. His amateur credentials were truly Tiger-esque; in 2004, Moore won the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Public Links, NCAA Championship, Western Amateur and Sahalee Players Championship. The PGA Tour has proven to be a tougher road. Moore does have runner-up finishes in each of the last four seasons: he also finished second at the 2007 Memorial, the 2006 Buick Championship and the 2005 Bell Canadian Open. The Byron Nelson was his first playoff, another step in the difficult march to a breakthrough win. “A loss is a loss, but I tied for first at the end of the day,” he said. “I was just proud of myself for battling around on a tough day in tough conditions.”

• Speaking of tough conditions, the TPC Four Seasons continued a trend this season — the courses are showing their teeth. Seemingly gone are the days of indiscriminately firing at pins amid benign conditions. The cumulative scoring average at the refurbished layout was 72.028, almost two full strokes higher than last year. The final-round scoring average was 73.066.

While Lorena’s Away…

Is the LPGA becoming like the PGA Tour? Do other top players have to wait for Lorena Ochoa’s absence to grab a much-needed win? It would seem so. Annika Sorenstam won the 71st tournament of her spectacular career, but it came on a weekend when the world’s top player was elsewhere keeping her four-tournament winning streak intact.

Like Adam Scott, Sorenstam needed extra holes to fend off a charging youngster. In her case, it was Paula Creamer, who came bolting out of the pack with some early birdies to wrest the lead away from Sorenstam.

“I thought I played very well, and so did Paula,” Sorenstam said. “She played excellent. I know it came down to the last, well, it took 19 holes to separate us. It could have gone really any way.

“I'm just fortunate that this time it was my turn, and I'm going cherish this moment. Like I said, I felt like I played well the whole week. This is a big tournament on our schedule, and it meant a lot to me to come down the stretch there and hit some really crucial shots and finish strong.”

It’s strange to say, but the greatest player in women’s golf history probably needed the extra jolt of confidence, as Ochoa returns to action this week ready to resume her assault on Annika’s position atop the historical heap.

It was Creamer’s first playoff, Sorenstam’s 22nd. Annika moves to 16–6 when forced to play extra holes.

North Star

Andy North is best-known today as an in-studio and on-course analyst. He hadn’t won an official tournament of any kind since the 1985 U.S. Open. Put him on a golf course with Tom Watson, though, and he’s a kid again. Watson and North teamed to win their fourth consecutive Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf, an event that only became an official Champions Tour event this season. It’s now been four years and 162 holes since the pair made a bogey at the two-man better-ball event.

Since the duo is such an unstoppable pair, North has a suggestion for U.S. Ryder Cup captain Paul Azinger, who has four captain’s picks at his disposal: “Maybe his guys can’t, but Tom and I can play teams,” North joked.

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