By Matt Murnane
A worn-out Adam Scott admits the most frustrating and unfulfilling year of his career is taking its toll at the Australian Open.
While he still believes he can be a surprise factor over the weekend, Scott seemed to talk about mustering the two low rounds needed to do it with hope rather than confidence as he left the Australian Golf Club on Friday.
Should the 35-year-old be unable to put it together on Saturday and Sunday, Scott will look back at his second round as the unofficial end to his pursuit of the Stonehaven Cup and a dream final-day showdown with Jordan Spieth.
The break-out round he drew up in his mind on Thursday night never eventuated, and he went backwards on Friday, as he toiled through his first birdie-less round for a long time to finish at two over for the day (and the same score overall).
Adam Scott has yet to really take off in November's tournaments in Australia.Credit: Mark Kolbe
A winning streak that Scott has worn as a badge of honour since 2001 now looks in serious jeopardy, with his odds to win here having ballooned beyond $20, and he only has one event left on his schedule – next week's Hero World Challenge on the PGA Tour – to close out the year.
The world No.12 has won at least one event in every year of his professional career – a 14-year run that is the equal of Tiger Woods' 14 years of success between 1996 and 2009 – but 19 events in 2015 have so far yet to produce a win.
The Queenslander conceded he felt "flat" on Friday as he teed off in the morning's marquee group, and with the effects of Thursday's brutal 39-degree test still lingering.
"Yesterday was tiring, probably, and this is my sixth event out of the last eight weeks," he said.
"And then getting out of bed at 4am this morning – I wasn't springing out of bed.
"I hit a couple of good shots but, really, nothing was feeling that great down the line today – I just didn't have the eye in."
That explanation would come as no surprise to the galleries, with Scott needing to hang behind his playing group at certain stages to give himself some time to think over why things were going wrong.
It was perhaps fitting, in a perverse way, that he will trace back his Australian Open fall to another day where the putter let him down, for it has been the story of his year.
Scott has said he is, in many ways, "a few years" behind his rivals in terms of putting – given he has had to revert from the long back to the short putter again – and Friday was an example of the ground he has to make up.
The former world No.1 missed a bunch of short putts that could have made a big difference, and he generally struggled to read the pace of the greens, missing a lot on the low side which led to several three-putts.
Scott said his second round was symptomatic of a problem he has battled all year, adjusting from fast-paced greens such as those at Huntingdale Golf Club at last week's Australian Masters to softer greens like here in Sydney, which had to be held back to deal with Thursday's intense heat.
"They kept them pretty slow yesterday, and I thought they were about the same pace starting out today, and then they got really slow," he said.
"I definitely do have a tendency to struggle going from faster to slower, and I did again today.
"I just couldn't get myself to hit the putt hard enough. I couldn't make the adjustment."
It seems Scott would need two rounds of at least 66 to get himself back in contention, something he said was "very doable", but only if he can channel the hunter mindset he has shown only once since coming back to Australia – his opening round of seven-under 64 at Huntingdale last week.