MONTREAL – Adam Scott gazed at a painfully familiar leaderboard perched just left of the 12th green as a few dozen fans lingered stoically. The U.S. Presidents Cup team was 10 minutes away from clinching its 13th victory in the event and there was nothing the Australian could do about it.
The Royal Montreal edition was Scott’s 11th start in the biennial blowout that has, save for a single moment in a previous century, gone exclusively the Americans way, and it was impossible not to read the body language of a player who is 0-10-1 on the international stage.
It wasn’t always this way. When Scott began his career in the matches, he was the fresh-faced up-and-comer — The Players champion — determined to challenge the United States’ dominance in the game.
In his first start at the matches in 2003, Scott went 3-2 for a team that played the U.S. side, and Tiger Woods, to a draw in South Africa. Two years later at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia, he again produced, going 3-1-1, despite an International loss.
Everything since has been a disappointment.
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Following another fruitless week for the Rest of the World, Scott is now 22-28-6. Lost on that scale is his victory alongside Taylor Pendrith on Day 2 that set the team record for points won and helped square this edition at 5-5, but ultimately did little to change an outcome that’s become far too familiar.
Scott hasn’t had a winning record since his first two Presidents Cups and he was 2-3 at Royal Montreal as the U.S. team rolled to an 18 ½ to 11 ½ victory. Yet even in defeat — just as he has been for more than two decades — he held tight to the notion that victory is within sight for the International team.
“I had a great feeling for this team coming in. I felt like there’s been an evolution under this shield the last two cups, four or five years of that, and buy-in from all the international players,” he said following his Sunday singles loss to Collin Morikawa. “It’s something that they aspire to play for. But you know, the result unfortunately is the same.”
More than any other player, Scott has been the face of the Presidents Cup, for sometimes better and more often than not worse.
Morikawa was his 11th different singles opponent and he’s had 19 different partners in team play with little to show for his efforts. While his loss Sunday dropped him to 5-6 in the individual format, it’s his team play that’s so baffling.
From Ernie Els and Retief Goosen to Pendrith and Hideki Matsuyama, he’s played alongside the Rest of World’s best with stunningly poor results and yet he stands as the pride, and perhaps the pain, of the International team.
When asked Sunday if he was driven to earn a spot on the 2026 squad that will take on the Americans, it was Tom Kim, who is half Scott’s age, who spoke for the team.
“Let’s make it three more. Three more,” Kim declared.
That’s the thing about legacies: they’re not always filled with accomplishments and accolades. For everything that Scott has earned in his career, from winning a major championship to more than two decades on the PGA Tour and 14 Tour titles, the Presidents Cup has always driven, and baffled, him.
“There’s almost no precedent, at least not for our side — I mean 11 Presidents Cups,” Geoff Ogilvy, one of Mike Weir’s assistant captains at Royal Montreal, said of Scott’s legacy. “He started as a kid with Ernie [Els] and Vijay [Singh] and [Angel] Cabrera and all those guys and he’s played all the way through to Tom Kim and stuff. It’s like he’s gone across generations. He’s the heartbeat of the team. He starts talking and all the kids stop talking. When Adam Scott talks about the Presidents Cup you stop to listen.”
It seems unlikely the 2024 Presidents Cup will be Scotts’ last but in golf, as in life, time is undefeated. He needed a late-summer equipment and attitude change to qualify for this year’s team and he admitted that the game is becoming increasingly difficult.
“I have a lot of fun with these guys. I told them at the start of the week it’s them who is motivating me and inspiring me to make this team,” Scott said. “The standard of golf is so high, and it’s getting harder for me to keep up, but it’s them that I look to to see what the standard is that I need to compete and be on this team. Hopefully I can keep it up for another couple years.”
But while the body and game, which produced four top-10 finishes in his final five starts of the season, remain willing, there’s no ignoring the fact that when the next match is played Scott will be 46 years old. While that will be well short of the oldest player to ever play for the International team — that honor belongs to Jumbo Ozaki, who was 49 when he played the ’96 matches — there’s no denying that the game is trending younger and younger.
Scott will be involved one way or another at the ’26 matches, either as a a vice captain or a player (he’s a good bet to captain in Australia in ’28), but as he finished another week on the wrong side of the victory column it was impossible to ignore what he’s meant, not just to the International team but to an event that continues to desperately search for parity.
