Adam Scott enters the US open on Sunday a shot again.
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Oakmont, without. – Earlier in the US open week Adam Scott, one month from his 45th birthday (and now a shot from the supremacy in Oakmont), asked how he views his “big championship window”. He stopped to consider the question, as he tends, then offered a word in response.
“lapsed“He said with a smile.
If you’ve seen Scott give interviews over the years, you can probably photograph what it looked like as he said it, what it looked like. You can appreciate how much Adam Scott was. Pithy. Diligent set.
But then he voluntarily, stated his intentions, allowed himself to dream.
“I’ve put together a nice career, but I think another great would go a long way in fulfilling my self, when they all said and done it all,” he said. It is a bold thing to say, that a victory will Fulfill your self. Because what happens if that victory never comes? But Scott knows what he wants and he is not afraid to say so.
“This is all that I really are playing for are these great events,” he added.
This was Friday, after the back-back rounds first. On Saturday, while Scott gathered ninth birds and was loaded towards the top of the US Open leadership after it became clear that the crowds in the country had chosen their favorites, Espn writer Couples uggs I reminded me of one of the great genres of sports stories and sports writing: The old guy still got it.
Is a phrase created, as far as I can say, from Bell Writer Bryan Curtis. He detailed the theory In a 2021 piece in which he describes the stories “Guy Old Guy has yet taken” as “as tales of a cute father’s veteran” or, my personal favorites, “having a late gathering”. Good things.
And people, feels like Adam Scott is making a late gathering. On Saturday he fired even in nine before and birds 13, 14, 17 coming home; The crowd found her favorite, noisy at home while he with two steps the 18th for Par and 67, connecting the low round of the day. Now he goes on Sunday a shot back, T2, and he will play in the last pairing with leader Sam Burns.
On the one hand, Scott does not look like an “old boy”. He is in a state of emergency and hits the ball very far and his oscillation is still used as the prototype of sports for perfection. He has always had an eternal quality, at the pace of golf and escort; He looked older when he was young and looks younger now that he is, from the time of a professional, old athlete. On the other hand, Curtis’s original subject of “Old Guy” was NBA 36-year-old Chris Paul. Perhaps 36 in the NBA years converted to 44 in the Pro Golf years. Be that as it may, Scott knows that opportunities like it will have Sunday alone so often.
“I really haven’t been in this kind of position for five or six years, or feeling like I’m a player. But that’s what I’m always working,” he said on Saturday. He had five consecutive Top-20 ends in 2018-19, including one-third in the PGA 2018 Championship. But he has not been so close since. “If I was to leave with you tomorrow, it would be a hell of a round of golf,” he said. “And a call point in my career.”
This “call point” phrase of a repeated feature of the old boy’s genre; One reason these stories are so fun to write and root is because they are satisfying the final chapters in a player’s career. Tom Brady The win of a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay is such an example, while Curtis refers to Carmelo Anthony as a misdemeanor sample – someone whose career never took his point of calling and ended up in an imperfect forgetfulness. So it goes for most athletes, even very good ones.
Maybe my favorite part of Curtis’s old boy’s observations is what he writes in the end. “When an older athlete becomes the main story, elderly writers suddenly discover they have an advantage,” he says. “When a sports writer says that ‘the old boy still got it,’ he is trying to convince you it Do you do too. ”
As I returned to the media center on Saturday evening, Golf Channel’s “Live From From” was, a show full of boys who still have it and likes the idea that Scott also does. I allocated as they scored at Saturday’s highlights and then I addressed Jaime Diaz, a respected Golf writer for decades, to give his perspective.
“So grateful in 44, almost 45 years old to see (Scott) playing this well,” Diaz said. “He has had a lot of heart strikes in his career, but he is deceitful a very brave guy.”
Brandel Chamblee built on that idea of Scott’s grief and provided evidence of his resistance from two decades back, in the 2004 players championship. Scott hit his approach to number 18 in the water, but calmly gathered himself on the road to an iconic victory. Chamblee also brought Scott’s heart blow to OPEN 2012, when he rejected the last four holes to lose. But Scott redeemed himself only two diplomas later when he won a green jacket in 2013.
“He goes for things in the right way. I mean, absolutely the right way,” Chamblee added. This is the general feeling about Scott – high -style used as an ordinary descriptor.
Show the host Rich Lerner added this: “These excellent championships are better with little sentimentality attached to them.”
And Paul McGinley raised it from the whole set.
“I believe in luck, and sometimes golf gods have something in the store,” he said.
So what is it for Adam Scott? Michael Bamberger, Golf’s greatest greatest writer, was leaving the media center as I got caught up with that question, so I lobbied him on his way.
“He’s the closest thing we have to federate,” Bamberger said, creating a comparison with the light grace of the Great Tennis. “He has an elegance for him.”
Golf’s story is full of old stories for a simple, clear reason: compared to other sports, it is much easier to play at a high level when you are old. But that doesn’t make them less special. Consider that two of the greatest masters win in the story were Old Guy’s classic still received narratives: 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus winning in 1986 (“There is life in old gold!”) And 43-year-old Tiger Woods in 2019 (“Return to Glory!”). Half of Scott’s road between their ages now, even if he is shy by the winner of 50-year-old Phil Mickelson in the PGA 2021 championship.
It doesn’t always work for the old boy, of course. Fifty -nine -year -old Tom Watson approached the heart in Open 2009. Fifty -one -year -old Sam Snead almost won the 1963 masters. Recently Justin Rose, which is 44 as Scott, completed the second in 2024 Open and then lost the Masters 2025 in a Play off.
So wait for the crowd to be on the side of Scott to come on Sunday, as he plays the last round of his successive 96th. Because he has been a favorite fan for two decades. Because his resume should include more than one major. Because if he can still do something great, then we, getting less graceful in the borders, are also capable of greatness.
Dylan Dothier is an elderly writer for Golf Magazine/Golf.com. Native Williamstown, Mass. Dothier is a graduate of Williams College, where he graduated in English, and he is the author of 18 in Americawhich details last year as an 18-year-old living out of his car and playing a round of golf in every state.
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