THE PLAYERS / Adam Scott goes back to long putter, Jason Day on his chipping changes

Jason Day and Adam Scott have made a few changes around the green ahead of THE PLAYERS Championship that tees off tomorrow.

Six golfers make up the Australian contingent at THE PLAYERS Championship this week at TPC Sawgrass, a tournament that’s been a pretty good place for Aussie success.

In the past 15 PLAYERS Championships, Australians have featured in the top-10 finishers on 11 occasions including wins by Jason Day (2016) and Adam Scott (2004).

Both Day and Scott will be joined by Marc Leishman, Cameron Smith, Rod Pampling and Geoff Ogilvy this week.

Day will no doubt go into the tournament as not just the favourite for leading Aussie but a favourite to win the tournament after his fighting victory at last week’s Wells Fargo Championship.

Day spoke to the media and gave us a nice insight into the changes he has made to his chipping which went from aiming at a landing area, to a looking at the pin – and now back again.

“Usually when I chip to a land spot or landing area, for some reason I would always pull up short,” Day said. “Probably nine times out of ten, I pull the ball up short of the pin. I’m sitting there going, well, there’s all those chips that I have, one’s going to get to the hole, and I’m leaving all these chip shots short and they’re potential chances of holing out.”

“Then I sat down and I’m like, okay, well I’ll just look at the pin, and I started getting them to the hole, but I changed the whole way or the kind of the makeup of how I actually chip.”

“And finally last year I just said I’m going to look at my land spot and then that’s it. Back to that now. I’m chipping it much better. Not so worried about holing chip shots anymore, just get them up-and-down. And it worked out great last week for me.

Adam Scott has also made a change around the greens looking to reverse a form slump that could see him without a spot in the US Open field next month.

Will Gray at the Golf Channel reported that Scott has switched back to the long putter for the week in the hope he regains some sort of ‘average’ form on the putting green. Currently he is ranked 193rd in putting strokes gained.

Scott started the year ranked No. 31 in the world, but the combination of a sparse schedule and mediocre results have dropped him to No. 71 in the latest rankings. It’s a trend he hopes to reverse starting this week on the Stadium Course greens.

“It’s easy to see why I don’t have good scores on four rounds, because two of the days my putting is well below average. And that just makes it almost impossible to compete,” Scott said. “I need to be average putting to be competing, which doesn’t sound that hard to do, really. I should be able to do that.”

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