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Adam Scott conceded he didn’t adapt to the brutal final round weather conditions and the significant delay in play when he squandered a golden chance to win a second career major at the US Open.
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The 2013 Masters champion was tied for the lead at Oakmont Country Club at one-over-par through 12 holes despite starting an interrupted final round at three-under and playing in the final group with 54-hol leader Sam Burns.
But when Scott went on a horrible run with bogeys at 14 and 15, before a double-bogey at the par-3 16th, it ended his hopes of adding to his green jacket.
Scott also dropped a shot at the 18th to tumble from three under starting the day to T-12 after shooting a final round of nine-over 79. With five dropped shots in his final five holes, Scott finished seven back of winner J.J. Spaun. The Californian made five bogeys in his first six holes but rallied to shoot an impressive 72 and at one-under he won by two shots over Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre (one-over). Viktor Hovland was third at two-over.
“All things being equal, it’s Sunday of the US Open, one of the hardest setups, and the conditions were the hardest of the week,” Scott said after missing out on an automatic return to next year’s US Open via a top-10 result at Oakmont. “Thank God it wasn’t like this all week.”
“I don’t know; it was tough,” Scott said. “It was bad conditions. No one really had a good score. I missed the fairway. I hadn’t done that all week really. Then I did, and I paid the price and lost a lot of shots out there. Couldn’t recover. Conditions were just tough. They were tough at the start. It was very windy. Hadn’t been that windy all week. Front nine played tough. Then once the fairways were soaked, it was very hard controlling the golf ball.”
Scott and Burns were on the eighth tee when the horn blew for a weather delay of more than an hour. Scott never regained the momentum he had. “Look, it just wasn’t easy out there,” he said. I felt better before the rain delay, that’s for sure. I went back out feeling OK, but then I left every kind of tee shot to the right coming in, and that was impossible to recover from. These kind of things happen all the time. Some people go home, and some people get a bit more rowdy when you come back out. It’s a slightly different atmosphere. It can affect the rhythm of things. Unfortunately, I think the course just couldn’t take much more water really…. I didn’t adapt to those conditions well enough.”
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After an opening bogey which put him two back of Burns, and another at the third, Scott steadied the ship with an eagle putt that burned the edge at the fourth hole, allowing a tap-in birdie. When Burns bogeyed the par-4 fifth, and Scott drained a nervy four-footer for par, he joined Burns atop the leaderboard at two-under-par through five holes.
On the par-3 sixth, Scott hit a beautiful tee shot but made a sloppy bogey with a three-putt. After the weather delay, Scott did his best to hang in there and somehow – at four-over for his first 12 holes – managed to stay tied for the lead as the wheels came off the Burns bus.
Meanwhile, LIV Golfers fared well. Tyrrell Hatton and Carlos Ortiz were T-4 at three-over while Jon Rahm was T-7 at four-over.
After Scott, Jason Day (73) was the next best of the Australians at eight-over while Marc Leishman (77) was 11-over. Cam Davis (73) was 22-over. Cameron Smith and Min Woo Lee missed the cut.