Adam Scott this week begins a month long and four tournament Masters winning celebration in his native Australia and with countryman and fellow Major champion Geoff Ogilvy declaring it to be a boom time for ‘Down Under’ golf.
Scott will tee-up Thursday in the Australian PGA Championship at the Royal Pines course on the Golf Coast before heading to Melbourne to compete in the Australian Masters at Royal Melbourne.
The first Australian in the 77-year history of the Masters to be fitted with the coveted Augusta National member’s jacket will then team a week later with Jason Day a week later in the World Cup of Golf and also being staged at Royal Melbourne.
Adam Scott starting a four-week, four event celebration of his Masters success.
Scott will then venture to Sydney where he will face former World No. 1 Rory McIlroy in the November 28th commencing Australian Open at Royal Sydney.
It is Scott’s first competitive appearance in his homeland since defeating former Masters winner Angel Cabrera with a birdie at the second extra hole.
Ogilvy captured the 2006 US Open at Winged Foot and then in 2010 he and Scott were tied in fourth place in the Masters.
But it was a year later when Scott and Day finished joint runner-up to South African Charl Schwartzel that Ogivly, who was also fourth in 2011, that Ogilvy believed an Australian could finally breakthrough in the cathedral-like setting that is Augusta National.
“We had a very strong chance of winning in 2011 with Adam and Jason finishing joint second, and that kind of brought back into peoples mind the thought that we can finally see an Australian win at Augusta,” said Ogilvy.
“It is all pretty exciting and this year was a very exciting tournament what with three different Australians, and with nine holes to play, each in with a chance of winning the Masters and any of them could have won.
“It had the whole country pretty fired-up with all the morning radio talk shows were cutting across to golf updates from the Masters, so it was pretty good.
“Hopefully now it will be huge for Australia in that the golf courses are busier and the driving ranges are full, and local club pros are booked out for golf lessons”.
Scott’s Masters triumph has also seen a wave of victories around the globe and with many of those Australians, including Brett Rumford who won back-to-back on the European Tour and Scott Hend, who has won three times on the Asian Tour, drawing inspiration from Scott’s Augusta triumph.
“Two weeks after watching Scotty win the Masters I won the Ballantine’s Championship and then the Volvo China Open and yes, it was seeing him win at Augusta that definitely helped inspire me to victory,” said Rumford.
“His win was huge for Australian golf and a huge lift for all the Australian golfers, men and women, playing around the globe.”
Ogilvy’s labelled Scott’s triumph the result of a ‘sweet spot’ resulting from the domination throughout the 1990s of Scott’s boyhood hero, Greg Norman.
“Scotty’s win will be so good also for the Australasian Tour because if you look at 10 to 15 year period after Greg Norman was the highest-ranked played in the world, Australia then all of sudden went from something like four to 15 players on the PGA Tour,” said Ogilvy.
“Australian golf very much had a sweet spot and you now look what is happening to South African golf in that 10 to 15 years after Ernie Els comes onto the scene and all of a sudden there is some half-a-dozen South Africans inside the top-50 on the World Rankings and they are really enjoying a similar sweet spot.
“The impact of situations like this cannot be underestimated because how many kids will now be picking up golf clubs and with youngsters sitting there that Monday morning Australian time watching Adam win the Masters and saying to themselves: “Hey! I can do that. I can win the Masters”.
“The immediate impact is that more and more people will begin playing golf in Australia and golf generally as an industry soars, and we see attendances at our Tour events increase because of what Adam achieved at Augusta.”
