Adam Scott is next in line to challenge Tiger Woods

It has been a long wait, everyone studying the faces of the players as they run straight into Tiger Woods and fall flat. The Rival Game, or finding someone who is going to challenge Woods, hasn’t yielded many results, but Adam Scott may change all that.

The list of Tiger’s rivals is long and it’s also deflating, because no one has endured in the role.

From David Duval to Ernie Els to Phil Mickelson to Vijay Singh and back to Mickelson, Woods has stood up to them all.

Maybe Scott can change that.

Making too much out of a single victory – and a tournament that Woods wasn’t playing – could be a concern, yet Scott’s playoff victory at the EDS Byron Nelson ought to shake things up a little bit.

He blew a three-shot lead, but Scott still found a way to win, and there’s something to be said about playing that way. Tiger-like?

Scott is 27, five years younger than Woods, he’s taught by the same swing coach (Butch Harmon) who tutored Woods in his early years as a pro, it’s his sixth PGA Tour win and 13th worldwide, he’s the first 54-hole leader to win the tournament in four years and he’s one of only six current players to have at least three straight years of winning at least once.

Scott had 18 birdies for the week – 19 if you count the 48-footer he rolled in to beat Ryan Moore on the third playoff hole. He also made a nine-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole to force the playoff.

Scott’s ranking is now fifth, a career best, and an improvement of 10 places from last week.

Now, we’ll know if Scott is for real as a major player once he starts to improve in the majors. He tied for 25th at the Masters and hasn’t been better than a tie for ninth there in 2002.

He has missed the cut four times in six U.S. Open appearances and he has one top-10 finish in eight British Opens. At the PGA Championship, Scott has done better. He tied for ninth in 2004, the same year he won the Players, and tied for third in 2006, the same year he won the Tour Championship.

Scott was a last-minute entry at the Nelson, and he’s going to try to keep it going at the Wachovia this week and then the Players.

This week, he said, is vital.

“[It] is important for me to just keep the momentum going a little bit and not relax and kind of keep pushing myself …kind of ride this thing out a little bit while I’m playing well and hope it’s just not one week of good play.”

That would be a good start to a Rival Game campaign.

Open case

The U.S. Open at Torrey Pines will be the first scheduled prime-time broadcast.

NBC announced today that its Saturday third-round coverage will air from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time and it will carry Sunday’s fourth round from 3 to 9 p.m. Eastern time.

The Open has been seen in prime time in the East before, but only because of weather delays.

And expect more of the prime-time scenarios, because the Open will be at Pebble Beach in 2010 and at the Olympic Club in San Francisco in 2012.

Chatter

Damien McGrane? He’s 37, he’s from Ireland, he beat Padraig Harrington in the 1988 Irish Boys Championship and after his first victory on the European Tour in a tournament at Beijing, McGrane might even make it on the Ryder Cup team.

That’s a long way from nowhere, which is sort of where McGrane has been. He worked as a club pro for years and was winless for six years on the European Tour.

McGrane is 16th on the Ryder Cup points list and has probably caught the attention of captain Nick Faldo after winning by nine shots at Beijing.

More Open

The U.S. Golf Assn. accepted 8,390 entries for the U.S. Open when the filing deadline closed, and the youngest and the oldest are both from the Southland – 12-year-old Rico Hoey of Rancho Cucamonga and 79-year-old Harris Moore Jr. of Los Angeles.

To be eligible for local qualifying, which begins May 5, players must have no higher than a 1.4 handicap or be a pro.

Tiger update

Woods has ditched his crutches and plans to start physical rehabilitation on his left knee as soon as he can. Writing on his website, Woods said he had been playing in pain for a while and had known for “a couple months” he was going to have arthroscopic surgery.

Woods also said he’s not sure when he will be ready to play again on the PGA Tour. He’s missing the Wachovia this week and the Players next week.

Post-Masters blues

Coming off his victory at the Masters, Trevor Immelman missed the cut at the Nelson, continuing a 20-year tradition of Masters winners not winning the next PGA Tour event they play.

Since Sandy Lyle won the Masters in 1988 and tied for 13th at the Verizon Heritage, the only player to win his next tournament after victory at the Masters was Woods, who won at Augusta in 1997 and then won the Nelson.

The rest of the Masters winners list and what they did next:

1989 Nick Faldo, T-11 Verizon Heritage.

1990 Faldo, T-16 Verizon Heritage.

1991 Ian Woosnam, T-55 U.S. Open.

1992 Fred Couples, T-59 Windham Championship.

1993 Bernhard Langer, T-16 Verizon Heritage.

1994 Jose Maria Olazabal, Missed cut at the Barclays.

1995 Ben Crenshaw, T-59 Houston Open.

1996 Faldo, T-59 Verizon Heritage.

1997 Woods, Won Nelson.

1998 Mark O’Meara, T-24 Verizon Heritage.

1999 Olazabal, T-4 Stanford St. Jude.

2000 Vijay Singh, T-3 Verizon Heritage.

2001 Woods, T-3 Nelson.

2002 Woods, 3 Nelson.

2003 Mike Weir, T-18 Wachovia.

2004 Phil Mickelson, T-2 New Orleans.

2005 Woods, T-11 Wachovia.

2006 Mickelson, T-15 New Orleans.

2007 Zach Johnson, 6 Verizon Heritage.

thomas.bonk@latimes.com