Adam Scott quite literally played a game of follow the leader during the first round of the 2022 BMW Championship.
The 42-year-old was pleased with his 6-under 65 on Thursday at Wilmington Country Club and sits just one shot behind early-wave leader and playing partner, Keegan Bradley. Harold Varner III, Shane Lowry, and Justin Thomas sit T-3 at 5 under.
“I watched Keegan, he played beautifully today, and I was really just trying to follow his lead,” said Scott. “He kind of had everything going the way he wanted, and most of the time he was teeing off first and I was just trying to follow.
“I think I was drafting off him. He shot 6-under the front and was running. Sometimes it’s good to see that and you can draft off each other, but also just to know that it’s really out there,” he explained. “When you get off to a slower start sometimes, you can make the course harder than it really is, and Keegan made it look easy today, so I tried to take advantage of that, as well.”
“It was really a fun day today playing with Adam,” Bradley added. “It’s always great playing with Adam, but we both were playing really well, hitting good shots, making putts. It was a blast.”
Scott made just one bogey Thursday and continues an impressive recent run of form. At last week’s FedEx Cup Playoffs opener, Scott moved up 37 spots in the standings to No. 42 after his T-5 finish at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. He’ll need another solid finish of 23rd or better during this week’s second leg of the Playoffs if he’s to move inside the top 30 and advance to the season finale, next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta.
“I think more than anything out of Memphis, I got some confidence out of having a result with maybe not my best stuff all four days,” Scott said. “It is a nice feeling walking on to any golf course when the confidence is a bit higher, and I certainly felt a sense of ease with that today.
“Last week I obviously had the same situation. I wasn’t in. But I really focused more on trying to put myself into win a golf tournament last week and just play the golf tournament as usual, and that would kind of get it done. It made me only have one focus, and that was on the tournament at hand. I think that’s kind of how I started today.”
Similar to Scott, Bradley tried not to focus on what he needs to do at a minimum to advance to the Tour Championship. It may sound cliché, but his lone goal is to play his best and let the rest fall into place.
“I never look to see what I have to do because whether I play in this tournament or Sony or any tournament, I always want to do the best I can, whether it’s 35th instead of 36th or first, whatever it is,” Bradley said. “I never feel like that helps me, I feel like it hurts me actually. But this is a good start, obviously.”