Memorial Tournament round two: Not quite perfect enough for Scott

Fasten your seatbelts for the weekend. This could be a thriller.

I like the AP line that Adam Scott ‘flirted with perfection’ Friday. He only failed to achieve it when he started thinking about it and lost concentration. But it was undoubtedly one of the great rounds of the season.

His stats are gold-plated: his worst is 23rd for accuracy off the tee. He’s fifth for distance, third for greens in regulation and pretty much top of the heap for putting. No one else comes anywhere near.

A round like that deserves to leave you with a huge gap to the chasing pack. Unfortunately Adam doesn’t need too much maths to work out that he’s still got it all to do. You might expect some adverse reaction to Friday’s heady round, but at Houston two months ago he showed he was able to keep things going with a winning 66 after a 65 shot him into contention.

His biggest threats are his fellow countrymen Rod Pampling and Aaron Baddeley, who cling to him like limpets, while Geoff Ogilvy, just two weeks away from defending his US Open title, is five shots back.

Bubba Watson has already nibbled at glory a few times this season and Sean O’Hair is still a threat despite slipping back Friday. The fact that he’s got bigger fish to fry makes me hesitate about Ogilvy and I’m not convinced Watson has what it takes to close the deal.

The history of this competition since 2000 suggests anyone more than two shots off the lead is going to struggle. There was just one exception: Jim Furyk, who in 2002 - like this weekend - was seven shots behind at the half-way stage and went on to win. He is again struggling with his putter a bit, but last week shows he has a potentially winning game close to the surface.

I’m not quite ready to write Tiger Woods off yet either. He only needs to remember where he left his putter and he’ll be fine.