Golfer Adam Scott Will get within the Swing for the Masters 2024
On the eve of the first of 2024’s four major men’s professional golf tournaments, the 2013 Masters champion talks to Prestige about his life in the game and how he rates his chances at the Augusta National this year, as well as his passion for watches.
If there’s one player at the top level of men’s professional golf about whom no one seems to have a bad word, it’s surely the 43-year-old Australian Adam Scott.
In spite of having 32 wins in the bag, most notably his victory after an edge-of the-seat endgame in the 2013 Masters, one of the sport’s four major annual championships, Scott appears to be the very antithesis of the superstar divo. Not only is he unfailingly approachable, charming and polite (and with a nice line in self-deprecation), but he’s also a devoted husband and father of three children, for whom family is easily as important as the game he plays. In fact, he’s so grounded that last November he made international headlines by casually chomping on a sausage roll while practising on course for Australia’s PGA championship. Nice guys do need to snack now and then, after all.
The lifetime holder of an invitation to the competition, as well as a Rolex Testimonee for almost as long as he’s been playing the sport professionally, Scott has for the past few months been eagerly anticipating the 2024 Masters Tournament, which begins at the Augusta National Golf Club on April 8. He spoke to Prestige in late 2023, while enjoying a rare two-week break from golf back home on Australia’s Gold Coast, about his love for the game, his prospects for this year’s Masters, his dress sense – he’s been called the most stylish player on the men’s tour – and, of course, his well-known passion for watches.
“Golf was in my family, so I was introduced to it very early on,” he tells me via videolink, as we tee off our conversation. “I was never forced out to the course, but I was around golf from a very young age. I think getting on to a par-3 course was probably what really got me stoked on golf, probably without even knowing what a par-3 course was – or any other kind of course for that matter! But the holes were shorter and it was a little bit like I was playing real golf from a young age and able to get advanced with the ball close enough to actually feel like I was playing the game.
“It was quite a good way of getting me hooked on the game. Although I played a lot of other sports as a kid, I think golf suited my personality, as I was quite happy to stand and practise on the range by myself, and didn’t have to have a team around me and teammates and those kinds of things. I think that’s how I how I became good quickly – and then because I was good I was enjoying it [laughs]. So it was a snowball effect from then on.”
After his first steps on to a course in the South Australian capital of Adelaide, the nine-year-old soon upped and moved north with his family to Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, an area whose name alone served as the promise of year-round golf for anyone keen on improving their game. So at what age did the young Scott begin nurturing dreams of a professional career?
“I think if you’d asked the 12-year-old [me] that question, he’d have said that that’s what he was gonna do – be a professional golfer,” Scott says. “But the reality is … that you just don’t know. I think once I started playing professional tournaments as an amateur and being successful, the belief was there – and maybe when I was about 18 years old it was clear that I’d have a real shot at doing this as a professional. Mind you, I never thought I’d do anything else, but in reality you never know what can happen. I have a lot of friends who I was very competitive with – and some who I think were much more talented than me. And they didn’t do much different from me, but then they didn’t go on to have professional careers.”
Such characteristic modesty belies the fact that Scott had won Australia’s Boys’ Amateur championship two years running and been selected for the Golf Australia National Squad before turning pro in 2000, just as he was turning 20 – and by 2001, during his first full year as a professional player, he’d won his first tournament, the Alfred Dunhill Championship in Johannesburg, part of the European Tour. Since then, his runner-up position in the 2102 Open Championship, that victory at the Masters in 2013 – the only win by an Australian player – and a 2014 ranking as world number one have inevitably become regarded as his career highlights, though he reckons there are plenty of others.
“I’ve won a few other good tournaments since then,” Scott explains. “I think in 2016 I probably played my best golf ever, and though I didn’t win a major that year, I consistently played at the highest level of my career. Quickly looking back through those years, winning the Genesis tournament in LA in 2020 was also memorable for me. It’s my favourite course we play on tour and Tiger Woods presented the trophy to me – and I’d spent most of my career trying to compete against Tiger. I say ‘trying’, because it wasn’t easy to beat him. But looking back on things, when a legend of the sport who’s associated with the tournament ends up presenting you with the trophy, it’s one of those nice moments I’ll always look back on. So that certainly was a highlight.”
Looking forward to this year’s Masters, Scott tells me he always likes his chances at Augusta because he’s very much in his comfort zone there. “I always seem to play OK – though OK doesn’t really win the green jacket, it’s got to be something better than that. My form at the end of 2023 was very nice, so my confidence is in a good place.” He adds that all his focus during the first three months of this year will be on the tournament. “As soon as I pick up the clubs, everything is about tuning in to be ready to play the Masters in April.”
Not only is this the 11th anniversary of his Masters victory but it’s also Rolex’s 25th year of partnership with the tournament. A Rolex Testimonee himself, Scott speaks of his gratitude to the brand for its long-term support of the game. “There’s such a great history in the game and a great history in the Rolex brand, and they match up well together. Rolex is looking for the number-one spot in everything it does in the watch industry, and it positions itself in the number-one spot in the game of golf as well. So being at the Masters is a must. And I think the two of them are possibly the two most powerful brands in the game.
“Personally, I’m fortunate to have been partnered with Rolex as a Testimonee for 22 years, which is quite incredible. Obviously, I know a lot about the company and what they do in in the game of golf – and many other areas too – but to think they had the foresight to partner with a young kid from Australia, who really didn’t know much about the company, or even the game of golf to be perfectly honest … And to support and breed champions, you know, and the pursuit of greatness …” The pause says it all.
“I’ve had very few partners over the years,” Scott adds, “and I’ve been lucky to have long-term partners. It becomes more like a family – and we speak of it as being part of the Rolex family. At this point it has a deep meaning. And when you’re playing these big events, like the Masters or the Open Championship, and seeing your partner’s presence there gives a feeling of support and comfort. And that’s something that probably gets overlooked. But sitting and thinking about it, it’s an incredible amount of support at the biggest events that we get to play. So not only are they supporting the game as a whole – which is huge – through ups and downs, but they’re also supporting a group of great champions out there and pushing them to succeed.”
So, the inevitable question: what’s in his watch collection? “Well, like I said, I’ve been a Testimonee for many years, so I’ve slowly acquired a few watches in that time and you can imagine my collection has built up a little bit – actually, it’s embarrassing to even say what number that might be.” Scott says his first-ever Rolex was a Day-Date in Everose, which he admits is “a strange choice” for a 21-year-old; around a decade later, he celebrated that Masters win with a specially engraved Sky-Dweller – “a very special watch” for him.
And when he’s travelling on tour, what goes on the wrist? “I have a little case I travel with that can hold four watches. So if I’m going away on big trip, I like to take a few. Sometimes – and I think this might sound terrible! – I theme it so it could be a Day-Date trip or perhaps it could be a GMT-Master II trip. The GMT-Masters are among my favourites, just for the practical purposes of travelling and two time zones, and also the Day-Date, so if I was travelling with just two watches, I think they’d be my go-to.”
Ranked at the top of Golf magazine’s list of the “most stylish people” in the game, Scott says of his dress sense that “it’s evolved, like everything with me, but I’ve had my moments! I mean, you could trawl through Google searches and find me in some interesting outfits on the golf course over the years.
“But I think one of the fun things about the game is that we don’t have a uniform like most sports do,” he adds. “So you can express your personality through the clothes you’re wearing. My personal style has evolved I guess to where it’s probably more age-appropriate these days – and I really like the sport aspect of golf, that it’s considered more athletic today than when I turned professional, so you can really cross the line between fashion and performance wear, and it still looks good and is versatile. And that’s kind of where I’ve leaned into in my personal style on the golf course.”
And unusually for a golfer – although perhaps less so for an Aussie – Scott’s also known to be a keen surfer, which as he spends much of his time based in Switzerland (it’s much more convenient for the tour) surely can’t be easy. “Hopefully I’ll go for a surf tomorrow morning,” he tells me from his Australian home, “though I don’t do it as much as I used to. It was kind of my escape, but as I now have three young kids, escaping is getting difficult. But even in Switzerland, there’s actually – I hate to call it a fake wave – a wave pool very close to where I live. So if I’m really desperate I can run away there for a while.”
And one last question. The great Jack Nicklaus was still playing competitively into his sixties, so how long does Scott see himself carrying on art the top level of the game?
“I think I’ve got a few more years in me, but to my sixties? I don’t know. Nicklaus was the greatest so, you know, he was maybe the exception. I definitely feel healthy enough and motivated enough at the moment, but I can’t put a number on it. As long as I’m feeling good I know I’m gonna keep playing. I don’t think you could ever stop me from teeing it up at the Masters tournament – it’s going to be a sad day when they tell me: you’re too old to play, you need to sit down out of it. But even though I’m 43, and the game is certainly getting younger, I still feel like I’m physically able to compete. I still have speed and I think if I get that life balance right this year, then I can compete for more years to come and win some big events.”
Source: Prestige Online
