Awesome for Scott.

A lot of you Aussie people give Adam a hard time, however, he is still a young guy. If there was a bookie who would take the bet, I’d be happy to put a ton on him winning a major in the next 2 years.

This is crap. How can a guy who cannot even contend in a major, ever, be ranked so high? It just shows that the rankings are a complete joke!

No 3 doesn’t mean much to me either when Scott has only one (or two?) top 10’s in Majors. In time he may get become a more consistant putter but presently I can’t agree he is No 3 in the world.

Just one more indication of the gulf between Woods and everyone else . You only have to win once a year and get a few decent results to move up the charts because Woods wins so many other events.
Having said that , Adam does seem to be playing a little better this year, which is nice.

This is crap. How can a guy who cannot even contend in a major, ever, be ranked so high? It just shows that the rankings are a complete joke!

So here’s the World Top 20 at the moment. Just who do you think should be No. 3 in place of Scott? And more importantly … why?

1 Tiger Woods
2 Phil Mickelson
3 Adam Scott
4 Ernie Els
5 Steve Stricker
6 Geoff Ogilvy
7 Jim Furyk
8 KJ Choi
9 Vijay Singh
10 Justin Rose
11 Padraig Harrington
12 Stewart Cink
13 Rory Sabbatini
14 Henrik Stenson
15 Trevor Immelman
16 Anthony Kim
17 Aaron Baddeley
18 Sergio Garcia
19 Luke Donald
20 Lee Westwood

Besides, the world rankings are just an order from a constructed formula, based on results that diminish over time. They are purely designed to rank players for event entry (particularly majors and events like the WGC), not settle personal arguments about actual skill or merit.

Scott deserves his ranking! Can’t wait to see if Anthony Kim can make a charge this year.

You either weight the rankings heavily in favour of the majors, or you don’t. If you do, they will tend to throw up players who fluke a top 10 here or there in a major but never win tournaments elsewhere.

Scott is ranked number 2 on the PGA Tour for adjusted scoring this year (i.e. taking into account the difficulty of the course) behind you-know-who. He is yet to miss a cut this season, and only missed 2 cuts from 19 starts in both 2006 and 2007. Over that time he finished top 3 in ten tournaments.

He is ranked 77th in putts at 29.09 (Tiger is 42nd at 28.63 ).
He is ranked 20th in putts per GIR at 1.759 (Tiger is 8th at 1.735).

Majors:
2008 Masters T25
2007 Masters T27, US Open MC, British T27, PGA T12
2006 Masters T27, US Open T21, British T8, PGA T3

That record at majors is hardly dismal. Only one result outside the top 30 in the last 9 majors. Consistent but yes, not a regular contender.

lets just be proud that an Aussie is number 3 behind 2 of the greatest ever

^{^}^here here

Well, isn’t that the question people are arguing about? Is he really the 3rd best male golfer on the planet? Or are the rankings flawed?

Sure I’m proud he’s an Aussie. Because I was born in Australia, and therefore I’m proud he was born in the same country I was. Oi oi oi. I’m not so proud about Tiger being #1. He wasn’t born in Australia.

it is not as if the ranking system is not known by everyone, Adam is achieving in the rules environment that have been set.
a change in the rules would just change the way people prep for different comps, who is to say that Scott wouldn’t succeed in the same way if the rules were altered.

well done i say :)

I think we need to be proud of Adam. He has done well over a number of years for someone so young and he is a humble champion. He plays well regularly and although he is frustrating at times, it is because he puts himself in contention frequently, and then suffers a few bad holes or poor round. Most other players aren’t in contention as often. Other players in the top 20 are not in contention as often as he is with the excption of Tiger and Phil.

2 aussies in the top 10…awesome.

Adam is a great golfer and it must be hard playing with such great expectation…and after seeing what happened to Greg Norman (in my humble opinion the man who started the trend towards pro golfers being the fit, mentally tough elite athletes we <generally> see on tour today)...Greg is our best golfer, was number 1 for 10 years straight but many people remember him as a ‘choker’...96 Masters and the bad luck he recieved at the 86 PGA and the 87 Masters…but he is a champion and always will be….

...back to Adam Scott, he is not a champion yet but he will be and he will be a wonderful ambassador for the game and Australia….we, as Australians are pretty harsh on our sports stars at times

I conquer live4golf. The bloke isn’t even thirty yet, is in the top 3 in a sport that has possibly the greatest athlete of all time at number 1 at the moment, and in which most players peak in their mid-30s. But its never good enough for us. No doubt if he wins a major sometime soon everyone will be all over him saying how they love him etc…

The same thing happened to an extent with Aaron Baddely. He won the two Australian Opens, went missing for a while and tall poppy syndrome kicked in, lots said he would never amount to anything. Now that he’s turned his career around everyone seems to love him.

Just my thoughts that will no doubt be attacked in the next post, but hey thats the joy of an internet forum.

For anyone looking for tall poppy syndrome in effect, please read above. Good on him I says! You can’t be a lousy golfer and be number 3 in the world IMO. I don’t know much about the ranking systems but they cannot be that flawed can they?

Adam is definitely my favourite out of the elite Australian golfers going around. He is probably the “best golfer never to have won a major” on the Tour. And he always comes across extremely well in interviews and seems to be a nice guy on the course. A great ambassador for Orstraya. My original post was to defend his stats – people say he is a bad putter, but 2nd in scoring and 20th for putts in GIR show that is a furphy.

But there is no need to get jingoistic and mindlessly patriotic either.

It’s a reasonable question to ask whether his record in majors adds an asterisk next to his ranking.

I don’t necessarily agree, just think it’s a fair question.

My understanding of the current points system is that you are ranked on the average points you earn per tournament you enter (are all tournaments included?). I think that is fair in that better golfers should be able to play better than golfers ranked under them. Therefore it doesn’t matter if you shank all your tee shots, if you can still score better than another bloke on average, then you should be ranked ahead of him. Any golf tournament that is on the PGA is similar to a major in that they all require you to play golf and as such I think that winning majors is not a prerequisite to being ranked near the top. Of course this is based on my naive veiw of the ranking system.

I am sick of everyone bagging him. Week in, week out the guy is performing on tour.

I just think everyone has too much of a focus on majors, probably because they are the only tournaments on free-to-air in Aus. Yes, winning majors is great but not winning them definately does not make him any worse a golfer or take away anything from his exceptional performances in other tournaments.

Scott DEFINATELY deserves to be the worlds number 3 ranked golfer and I am going to say that I love him now, so that if he does win a major, I can’t be accused of jumping on the band wagon.

AND

I love Greg Norman aswell. I couldn’t give a stuff if he won the Masters or not. I was in nappies when Norman was in his prime, but even watching him on TV over the last 5 years is amazing. He just seems to have this living legend aura around him.

I am pretty sure Phil Mickleson who is number 2 in the world has won only 2 majors and i don’t think he won any before he was 30 years old ..Adam Scott still has time on his side ..alos a pretty good player that goes by the name of Ben Hogan did not win any until into his 30’s
Go Scott!!!!
Just watch out for the next aussie Icon Jason Day