Australian Open: Battered Adam Scott held to a birdie-free Friday

It was a frustrating day for Adam Scott at the Australian Open.

Adam Scott had talked up a storm independent of any carry-on from an emotional mother nature. In the pro-am on Wednesday he matched words with birdies — 10 of them. A day later on Thursday he retrieved a failing first round of the Australian Open with a long chip at the 9th hole, calculated to bend gently left near the cup and fall in.

It did just that and thus, while it was for a double bogey, it saved his card from an irretrievable savaging. In fact, it was so significant it allowed him to walk to the 10th tee with, in his words, his head held high. We do not believe this was some last-minute technical judgment but rather a tortured nod to his good fortune.

And by nightfall he was back in the clubhouse, out of the heat and the wind, at even-par. He had built himself a launch pad. Yesterday he built himself a bomb site.

Scott, who has promised the past two weeks that his game is in sync and his putting comfortable with the switch to the new regulation putter length, played round two without inspiration or zest. He put it down to the battering he took physically and mentally in Thursday’s maddening winds which had threatened to blow the players’ minds.

Scott said: “Yeah, yesterday was tiring probably, and this is my sixth event out of the last eight weeks and getting out of bed at four o’clock this morning, I wasn’t springing out of bed and then I just misjudged the pace of the greens for most of the day. I just couldn’t get myself to hit the putt hard enough and when the greens slow down I tend to struggle and I did again today.”

Evidence of the lack of daring and virtuosity in Scott’s play was stark: not one birdie on his card. He could not remember the last time he had failed to break par on one hole at some stage, somewhere, somehow, sometime. Some stat.

Matthew Jones was in the group behind Scott and played infinitely better. He had finished late on Thursday and the tail of his round had been constructed when the whip had gone from the wind and the raw heat from the sun. Jones birdied four of the last nine holes of his first round, one of which came from a five-metre putt for birdie on the 18th to be one off the lead of someone called Lincoln Tighe.

And yesterday if Jones was tired — which he was — then he was not beaten up in the manner of Scott. He would not find birdies impossible. Starting his second round on the 10th tee he was in the lead after five holes with birdies on the 13th, 14th and 16th. A single bogey on the second nine was retrieved with a matching birdie and Jones finished his day in the lead and unlikely to relinquish it. Jordan Spieth, of course, the accepted wildcard.

It would be a grave error to think just because cars were not melting and houses not being blown away that yesterday was not a wicked day to play golf. Two examples. On the 2nd hole, a glorious par-three where players tee off from what seems a mountain top across a paddock of grass to a green all but 200m away, the wind lies in ambush.

From the tee you can see slopes and valleys of the green below but the wind, hardly invisible, nonetheless is unreadable. Despite the best efforts to analyse swinging branches, swaying trees and flapping flags.

Jones hit a tee shot that was tracking just left of the pin. The wind, by any measure available to humans should have moved the ball right. Jones had sent the ball out on the correct path but the wind met it with fierce resistance and pressed it to the ground, a king-hit of backspin. It ran up the first tier, over the second hump and to the back of the green. A sweetly hit iron, perfectly cal­culated, was a chance of a three-putt disaster. Which is what Jones did. Still in the lead but he had dropped to six-under.

On the 3rd hole Jones was a wedge away after a pedantically placed tee shot. Jones hit his approach as he had determined but the ball landed on the very front of the green and spun back two metres off the surface. The ball finished so short of the target it was easily presumed the 35-year-old Australian had hit the shot fat. But, no, he said it was the wind which grabbed the ball and threw it part of the way from whence it came.

Spieth does not play with the flair of Sergio Garcia, the sycophantic fan support of Phil Mickelson, the raw power of Dustin Johnson, visible strength of Scott or the sanctity of Zach Johnson. But he plays.

Every shot in the book with every club in his bag. But it is done with minimal eccentricity, barely noticeable body communication. He is the tradesman who has the second coat painted before you knew the undercoat was on.

For 14 holes yesterday we watched Lincoln Tighe (pronounced tie), the muscled up, big-hitting young man from NSW revel in his position as overnight leader. And, while Jones went out early Tighe had drawn level with him at seven-under par after consecutive birdies on the 10th and the 11th. And then the inevitable. He dropped a shot at 15, another when he bogeyed the next hole and two more when he double-bogeyed the 17th.

And to think we were considering calling him the new Tigheger.