Scott Soaring With Late Round Australian PGA Eagle.

4 years ago by Comments Off on Scott Soaring With Late Round Australian PGA Eagle.

Adam Scott brilliantly rebounded from an unlucky 13th hole double-bogey in eagling the par-5 15th hole in a round of 70 on day one of the co-sanctioned Australian PGA Championship at Royal Pines on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

The former Masters champion, and highest world-ranked played in the field, ended the first day of the last event of the year sharing 15th place and trailing just three shots behind the leading fellow Australian duo of Lucas Herbert and Brett Rankin who share the lead on five-under.

Scott, and a four-shot winner of the event in 2015, got off to a great start with an opening hole birdie and should have also birdied the par-3 fifth hole when his long putt stopped right on the edge of the hole but just would not fall into the hole.

The World No. 15 made ammends with a long birdie at the 10th to move to two-under but then gave two shots back when he doubled the par-4 ‘unlucky’ 13th hole.

However, Scott was smiling broadly when he holed a second monster putt on the Royal Pines back nine in seeing his eagle putt on 15 drop.

“Yeah, I needed to have a good finish and the eagle helped,” he said.

“It was a day today where not playing well, you could be over par quite easily and leave yourself a lot of work to do to get into the tournament.  A round like I ended up at 2 under leaves me in a great spot with hopefully light winds tomorrow morning to come out.

“Overall, I played good today.  Unfortunately, I really mis‑hit that driver at 13 and it cost me two.  Other than that, it was pretty stress free.  I was very happy with it.  It wasn’t that easy out there.  I seemed to get a lot of in‑between numbers and you have to kind of ‑‑ when it’s windy here, you kind of have to be a little bit careful because you don’t want to be chipping short‑side around here, the grain is just too much to deal with.

“So I was pretty stress free.  I wish I could have that swing on 13 over again, but all in all I feel good about my round.

“I’m putting good.  I mean, look, it’s not easy.  The course is in good shape, but there’s so much grain around these greens that once you’re out past 30 feet, even inside 30 feet, it’s very hard controlling speed, putting through different grain patches.  It’s just the way it is.

“So you’re going to have to be patient and just try and hit as good a putt as you can and I hit a few good ones and made a few.”out.  I mean, he’s got a pretty swing and hits it one way, but it was good to see him kind of compose himself.  He hung in there for a few holes after his poor start and then he composed himself and got on a bit of a roll there nicely.  That’s good qualities to see out there because, like I said, it was easy for it to really get away from you today if you just were a little bit off.



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