A GOLFING blether with Adam Scott will always work its way round to one topic eventually. 

He may be at Royal Birkdale but Royal Lytham is never far away. In fact, there it is Adam. Over there, across the Ribble Estuary. 

Five years ago, just up the north west coast, Scott endured that infamous, calamitous collapse when he leaked four shots over his final four holes to lose out on clinching the Claret Jug by a single shot.

“I cringe when I think about it,” he said with a clenched-teeth sigh. Funnily enough, this scribe does the same when he reads back some of his own introductions to golf pieces.

Could Scott be the story here this week? Well, his Open pedigree is certainly impressive. Since that disastrous denouement at Lytham, Scott has finished third, fifth and 10th. 

The 37-year-old has a Masters green jacket in his wardrobe – he won it a few months after that Open woe – but there is plenty of unfinished golfing business for the Australian. Lytham will not define his career but he remains determined to banish the lingering demons.

“It’s impossible not to think about it,” he said. “I don’t lose sleep over it any more but to think about letting a chance like that go is heartbreaking. 

“Obviously winning the Masters soon after eased some of the pain. But it’s still not the Open. We always want what we don’t have . . . and I don’t have a Claret Jug.

“I may never get a better chance than that. That’s not to say I won’t win one. I’m greedy and I want to hold all four major trophies at some point, because they each represent so much about the game. 

“Phil Mickelson felt after he won the Open that he was a more complete golfer. As brilliant as he is, he felt he needed to pass that completely different test. I want to feel like that – that I’ve conquered it.”

There’s a back catalogue of Australian major misery that Scott can reference, of course. 

Greg Norman’s well-documented sore ones in the Masters and the Open over the years continue to give budding golfers Down Under the heebie-jeebies. 

“I grew up watching Greg Norman playing and I idolised the guy,” said Scott. “I watched him take really hard defeats, and the way he bounced back showed me what a champion was. 

“There are other guys who have taken tough losses as well. I bet Jack Nicklaus rues a couple of majors in his 19 runners-up finishes.  

“If you are up there it’s going to happen. I stew about St Andrews in 2015 when I was joint leader with five holes to play and finished horribly. I was joint leader with six to play when Mickelson won at Muirfield and played the last six poorly.”

For Scott, Lytham 2012 remains the ultimate golfing lesson. “Despite what happened, it was one of those moments where I realised it was possible for me to win a major, really possible,” he reflected. “I had won tournaments before but had never been in that situation in a major. I just tried to learn everything I could from it and use it as motivation.

Birkdale certainly suits Scott’s golfing eye. “Without sounding crazy, it’s not too dissimilar to some of the great sand-belt courses in and around Melbourne,” he said. 

“It’s just a little more tidy than some links courses, with quite defined holes and green complexes. Because of these similarities, I feel some level of comfort here.”

Birkdale may yet soothe those deep Open wounds.