Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy walked a different walk to open the PGA Championship

SAN DIEGO – When Adam Scott putts well, Adam Scott contends. It’s a simple saying that could apply to most PGA TOUR players but it most certainly applies to the 13-time TOUR winner. Known as a premier ball-striker throughout his career the former PLAYERS champion has long struggled to match up his putting stats with the rest of his game. In 10 of his last 11 seasons Scott’s year-long rank in Strokes Gained: Putting has been outside the top 100 on TOUR with six of those outside the top 150. But on the rare occasions he gets it right – like the Australian did this week at the Farmers Insurance Open – Scott becomes a monster to contend with. Since the beginning of 2016 Scott has finished just 10 tournaments inside the top 25 players of Stroked Gained: Putting. Eight of those weeks resulted in a top six finish, including two wins and two runner ups, the latest at Torrey Pines this week. Scott was 14th in putting at Torrey Pines needing just 28 putts each round across four days. He did it after moving to an armlock putter with a claw grip and leaving the flagstick in for all of his putts. Armlock putting has been successfully used recently by Matt Kuchar, Bryson DeChambeau, Keegan Bradley and Webb Simpson. All have won at least once in the last year. “Making the putter change was a pretty good experiment this week, it worked nicely,â€� Scott admitted. “Definitely something to build on. I learned a lot with that style of putting this week and it was quite a big adjustment and I made some errors out there with it, but it’s looking all positive and I like that. Twenty‑eight putts four straight days is probably the best I’ve ever done.â€� The errors Scott spoke of were certainly ugly. And without them he may just have been able to take down Justin Rose rather than finish two shots behind the Englishman. On Sunday he missed a putt from 21 inches. On Thursday he had a three-putt from six feet. Those were just a few of the miscues. But given he only picked up the armlock putter in the days prior to the event there were sure to be teething problems. Armlock putters have different loft angles because of the setup needed to use them, a visual the 38-year-old veteran certainly wasn’t used to. “All of a sudden six degrees of loft and the grip is three inches in front of the blade, so it was a little fiddley getting into position,â€� Scott said. “And when I didn’t put it in the right position, it was in a more natural position, I didn’t start putts where I was intending. “So I missed a couple really short putts throughout the week, which was carelessness.â€� Scott intends to continue the method at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Open in coming weeks.

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