NEWS

Notebook: Adam Scott sets scoring record at one of golf's classic courses

By Doug Ferguson
Published on
Notebook: Adam Scott sets scoring record at one of golf's classic courses

ATLANTA – Adam Scott had a record-setting score last week, just not at the BMW Championship. 

On his way to Chicago, the Masters champion played a casual round at Shinnecock Hills and wound up setting the course record with a 63. Scott played the red tees, which are the tips on the Long Island course. He made a 12-foot putt on the last hole to beat by one the record set by Raymond Floyd during a recreational round in 1996.

"It's pretty cool," Scott said. "The members got pretty excited when I came off the course, and it's one of the best tracks in the world, for sure. No one has ever shot that score in over 100 years off the tees I played. So that's a pretty neat thing." 

Shinnecock Hills is one of the five founding clubs of the U.S. Golf Association. Scott had rounds of 75-75 to miss the cut when the U.S. Open was held there in 2004. It returns to Shinnecock in 2018. 

"It was a really fun day, and I felt a little sense of achievement, absolutely – especially beating Raymond Floyd," he said. "It's added to a really good year." 

AN AWARD FOR JACOBSEN: Peter Jacobsen is this year's recipient of the Payne Stewart Award, given each year to a player who personifies some of Stewart's traits – integrity, sportsmanship, presentation and charity. 

The award began the year after Stewart perished in a freak plane accident in 1999, the year he won the U.S. Open. 

"He was an amazing guy," Jacobsen said. "A lot of you knew Payne, knew what he stood for. He was a dynamic personality, somebody who was as intense competitor as there is in the history of the game, but also somebody who knew how to have fun." 

And not just on the golf course. 

Stewart played the harmonica in "Jack Trout and the Flounders," the band of PGA Tour players that Jacobsen organized. 

"Huey Lewis, who's a great harmonica player, said Payne was about an 8 handicap on the harmonica, which is pretty good. Because he (Lewis) was about a 15-handicap golfer. So it's a fair trade." 

DIVOTS: Steve Stricker says his practice amounts to playing golf during the summer in Wisconsin. In the winter? That's a different story. "I enjoy practicing because it's all I can do," he said. ... Mike Scanlan is leaving the LPGA Tour as its media director to become communications director for IMG in North America. ... The AT&T National began in 2007 as a new tournament built around the Fourth of July in the nation's capital. That's no longer the case. The tournament hosted by Tiger Woods now has moved earlier, and that Fourth of July date now belongs to The Greenbrier Classic. ... Dating to the Canadian Woman's Open last year, 16-year-old amateur Lydia Ko would have earned just short of $1.2 million. ... Five players from PGA Tour Canada have earned Web.com Tour cards for next season: Mackenzie Hughes, Riley Wheeldon, Mark Hubbard, Hugo Leon and Wil Collins. 

STAT OF THE WEEK: Nick Watney (63) started the FedExCup playoffs with the worst seed of the 30 players who made it to East Lake for the Tour Championship. Harris English (19) had the best seed of players who did not make it. 

FINAL WORD: "It's been a college degree and a Masters' degree. I've learned more than any other year." – Jordan Spieth, on his rookie season on the PGA Tour.