Adam Scott vents at Australia’s handling of Covid-19 and missing family

Adam Scott hasn’t seen his family in a long time and wonders when he will be able to as he questions Australia’s handling of Covid-19 from afar.

Adam Scott misses home and questions how Australia is handling Covid-19. Picture: Getty Images

Adam Scott misses home. He misses his family. He wants his parents to see their grandchildren. He wants his children to see their grandparents. He watches Australia from afar and struggles to come to grips with how the land of his birth is handling their response to Covid-19.

He wants to come back for tournaments at the end of the year but can’t see how it is possible. As he prepares for the latest stop on the tour at the Wyndham Championship, Scott has detailed the mental anguish he has endured this year and vented at what he believes is Australia’s inability to come to grips with Covid-19 in comparison to the rest of the world.

“Australia’s having a lot of issues at the moment because of their kind of policies toward the virus and that’s very frustrating,” Scott said.

“What my perspective is overall is probably it’s very frustrating when you live in one place with a policy and you’re operating also in another place with a different policy.

“That made it very difficult this year, and I think the US and the UK is seemingly really learning how to live with the virus now and it seems like it is making some progress.

“There’s probably still some ups and downs to come, but it seems like really moving forward. Now I find it frustrating that Australia is maybe lagging behind at the moment and have very strict measures over the virus.

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“It basically means I’m not going home any time soon and I’m more concerned now about getting to see my parents and them getting to see grandkids that they haven’t seen for a long time and some they’ve never met.”

Scott is now based in Switzerland but has generally modelled his schedule to allow him to return to Australia at the end of the year. That seems unlikely this year given his comments, a blow to the local tour as they plan for the Australian PGA and Open to resume after taking a 12-month hiatus due to Covid-19.

Scott would generally be a poster-boy for the events but it seems they will have to make do without him in 2021. His absence from the PGA will be particularly galling for organisers given he is the last winner – he won by two shots in 2019 before the tournament became a casualty of the pandemic last year.

“At this point Australia’s kind of going backwards a little bit,” he said.

“It’s not looking promising for later this year at the moment. You know, we had another child this year, lots of stuff happening, I was away from the family a lot and news was going crazy obviously with so many different things happening all around the world.

“I’m watching news in Australia and I’m watching news in Switzerland, watching news in the States. Not a lot of positive stuff was going on and most of it was quite frustrating certainly regarding travel

“You know, trying to find that balance is something that’s always evolving and I think that quiet head space is a good head space for me just to be calm and ready to play golf because we’re trying to play at the highest level.

“I think, you know, I neglected that mental side just for a little bit and the last few months I certainly feel like I’ve had a better head on my shoulders for it.”

Scott admits the constant fretting over travel arrangements played on his mind and affected his golf. It wasn’t until he made a conscious decision to switch off that his golf started to improve.

“Earlier this year … I had to turn the news off and I took every app off my phone and just had to block some noise out,” he said.

“There‘s just so much going on every week. The rules of how I could get home or not or whatever was changing and there was just so much happening, it was very difficult to plan anything and I just decided that I just need to focus on playing golf and quieting everything down and get my head on straight.

“I think it‘s been much better since I did that.”