Adam Scott will look to take advantage of a tournament without world No.1 Rory McIlroy and major drawcard Phil Mickelson when the World Golf Championships (WGC) HSBC Champions tournament, gets under way on Thursday.
McIlroy and Mickelson have not made the long trip to China, but world No.2 Scott and fifth-ranked Henrik Stenson have, the latter just 11 days after the birth of his third child.
Scott skipped the WGC-HSBC Champions last year, so could understand McIlroy’s decision to stay away and prepare for his upcoming court case with his former management company.
“Unfortunately I decided not to come last year and I had heavy commitments in Australia, and that’s a tough decision,” said Scott.
But he believes it will not detract from the tournament with such a galaxy of stars from both the European and PGA tours on show for the 10th anniversary of the event.
“There are not many tournaments that can claim to have a field as strong as the one for this weekend’s tournament,” he said.
He admitted that his task of winning the $1.6 million first prize was a touch easier without McIlroy present.
“Selfishly, yeah. Rory is the main threat to everyone and it opens up the field a little bit this week,” added Scott, who will tee off in a mouth-watering threeball alongside 2009 HSBC Champions winner Sergio Garcia and Rickie Fowler.
Fowler, 25, in 2014 joined Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus as the only golfer to finish in the top five in all four majors in a season.
McIlroy won two majors this year, The Open Championship and the US PGA. The other two major winners of 2014 are both in Shanghai.
Masters champion Bubba Watson was 36 on Wednesday and told reporters he would love to celebrate by capping a famous year with another victory.
“I’ve never won a World Golf Championship, so I’m looking forward to it,” he said after a year in which he also won the Northern Trust Open and had eight top-10 finishes.
US Open champion Martin Kaymer should be fresh as he said Wednesday he had hardly lifted a golf club since playing in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championships at St Andrews at month ago.
“I’ve played only three rounds, and that was in Bermuda, and then I haven’t practised at all because I didn’t really want to,” the German admitted. “There was so much golf. It was quite nice to do something completely different.
