At his pre-tournament press conference Tuesday, International Team captain Geoff Ogilvy was asked how much his Presidents Cup team wanted to win one “for the old guy.”
“Who’s the old guy?” Ogilvy asked, as the exchange prompted some laughter in the room.
When the reporter said the remark was about Ogilvy’s Australian countryman Adam Scott, the captain asked, “Did you call him the old guy to his face?”
Now 46, perhaps Scott is less aged than he is ageless. And in a team competition with a rotating cast of characters every two years, it can be galvanizing for the International Team to have a veteran in Scott who has played in every edition of the Presidents Cup since 2003.
That’s 11 competitions, with 10 losses, one tie and zero victories over the United States for Scott and the International squad.
“He’s obviously a big inspiration,” Ogilvy said. “We mentioned it last night, but he played his first Presidents Cup in 2003. Some of these kids — a lot of these kids weren’t even playing golf in 2003.
“It’s a cool journey he’s taken. When he first got into that room, he was playing with Ernie Els and Vijay Singh and Nick Price. He was the young one in the room, and now he’s the guy they all look at.
“Certainly, you would have thought if you were going to play all 12 in a row from 2003, that he would have won one by now. So it would be fantastic for the team, and I know everybody feels that way, that he’s a big part of the inspiration they want to win for.”
Ogilvy went on to name Hideki Matsuyama in the same vain, as the Japanese star is preparing for his seventh Presidents Cup in a row. But Scott still has Matsuyama’s longevity beat by a full decade.
“He’s part of the International furniture now,” South Africa’s Christiaan Bezuidenhout said. “He’s played in 12 of them. Yeah, he plays as good as what he played 25 years ago. So, I mean, all of us would love to win the Cup, but it would be so much more special if we can do it while Adam is still in the team as well.”
To that point, Scott has not drifted far from the apex of the sport in his 40s. Ranked 45th in the world, he tied for ninth at the most recent major, the Open Championship. That marked his 101st consecutive major start, the second-longest streak in the sport’s history. And at the most recent Presidents Cup in 2024 at Royal Montreal, he came away with two points, tied for most of anyone on the team.
He contended at the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth Club last week, joining a tie for second with the likes of Rory McIlroy.
“I feel like my game has been in good shape throughout the year and I played reasonably well in the playoffs recently,” Scott said. “But of course coming in off a good week last week at Wentworth is nice for the confidence, that’s for sure.”
He relayed a story of having dinner with Matsuyama in Japan shortly after they lost the Presidents Cup in 2024.
“We talked about how much we want to win this together. Hideki has kind of been like my little brother,” he said with a laugh. “In this event since 2013 we’ve been playing together. For both of us I think a victory would be so sweet.”
Scott said his passion for golf looks the same now as it did at his first Presidents Cup in 2003, but plenty else has evolved since then.
“Obviously the experience is a nice thing for me coming in, and also being able to share some of that experience with the other guys like Ernie did with me my first Cup. You know, he really probably needed to take me under his wing that week, and he did and it was an incredible experience for me. I don’t know if we have anyone on the team who really needs that this week. Even our rookies are quite seasoned, you know, like they’re great players. No one’s really out of their depth.”
One of those rookies, Ryan Fox of New Zealand, knew exactly what to say when asked who on the team had his favorite swing.
“It’s not really a hard one, is it?” the Open champion said of choosing Scott. “He’s one of the favorite swings in golf for pretty much every golfer.”
To Fox, being on the International team means being the underdog. It comes with the territory for a historically outmatched collection of golfers with a 1-13-1 record against the mighty Americans.
“We do have a chance to do something incredible,” Fox said, “when we’ve got a couple of guys on the team who have played a lot of these that we really want to get a win for. I think that’s our motivation. I mean, Adam especially over there.”
