Adam Scott on the cover of sunday magazine - Australia's most popular weekly magazine
A couple of weeks ago I spent the day with Australian golfer Adam Scott for an interview published last weekend in sunday magazine.
The 29-year-old Queenslander was intent on getting his form back for the final four tournaments of the year, the first of which was the Barclays Open in Singapore where he finished third on the course that’s delivered him victory twice before.
Then Scott tied for 6th at the Australian Masters in Melbourne on November 16, a finish that pushed him up the official world golf ranking chart to number 62. Sure, it’s still a long shot from his top rank of 3rd in 2007 but it is 14 better than his previous rank of 76, and will lift his confidence going into the Australian Open in December.
The thing that struck me about the lanky golfer was his down-to-earth nature and the honesty with which he addressed his form slump in 2009. “It’s been my worst year ever,” Scott told me bluntly, without shying away from the subject.
We spent the day at the gated community of Sanctuary Cove, where Scott lives when he’s not touring the world. He has a house high on the hill with views of the ocean and reminisced about how the neighbourhood has changed since he moved there from Adelaide with his parents, Phil and Pam, and younger sister Casey, while still in his teens.
“I got a shock when I came home this year and saw a McDonald’s on Hope Island,” he said with a laugh. “I thought ‘we have cracked it, Maccas on Hope Island’.”
Scott was a dream to work with and spent hours being shot for the magazine without complaint, apart from a joke “you’re in my personal space” when the photographer got, well, in his personal space for a close-up portrait.
Ana Ivanovic, the Serbian tennis glamour who is also golfer Adam Scott's girlfriend (picture www.anaivanovic.com)
Nothing was off limits. He revealed how he was also happily involved with Serbian tennis ace Ana Ivanovic and spoke about how their relationship began and how it’s been going this year. Great, apparently.
Not surprisingly with such a high profile girlfriend, Scott has become the focus of the paparazzi and gossip magazines, several of which had him linked with Academy Award winning actress, Kate Hudson, earlier in the year. Not true. Before Ivanovic, he was in a steady, seven-year relationship. He ain’t the playboy some make him out to be.
“When I first started playing I really flew under the radar a lot. When you have no status on the tour anywhere, you are just another one of the guys but as soon as you are successful you are in the spotlight,” he says.
A few things: Scott will take possession of a $36.95 million Gulfstream G450 jet next year as part of a promotional deal with the aviation giant. The plane is not valued at $75 million as has been previously reported.
He is a huge fan of novelist Dan Brown and reckons Angels and Demons is his best book yet. He is currently reading the latest Brown tome but has problems staying awake on flights, which is where he does most of his reading.
I’ll be catching up with Scott – and a few other top-name golfers including Geoff Ogilvy, Greg Chalmers. John Daly and Freddie Couples – again at a pre-Aussie Open cocktail party at one of Sydney’s best restaurants, Guillaume, in December.
More about that later.
