MELBOURNE, Australia — This is Adam Scott’s ninth Presidents Cup and it’s being played on his native Aussie soil. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Scott, a normally reserved personality, has stepped forward to be the leader of an International team looking to score a major upset against the U.S. team at Royal Melbourne Golf Club.

He should be considered an unofficial vice captain, offering his voice and talent to a team composed of players from different countries around the world. Scott has led what could be a rout of the American team by letting his clubs do the talking during the first two sessions of the Presidents Cup where the Internationals have forged a 6 ¹/₂-3 ¹/₂ lead heading into Saturday.

Scott teamed with Louis Oosthuizen on Friday to come from behind and whip Dustin Johnson and Matt Kuchar, 3&2. It set the tone for another dominant day by the International team and followed Thursday’s opening session of Four-Ball when Scott teamed with Byeong Hun An to defeat Bryson DeChambeau and Tony Finau 2&1.

So much for this being an event all about Tiger Woods. The Americans are in trouble and will need a good showing Saturday when there will be one session of Four-Ball followed by the final session of Foursomes. There will be 12 singles matches on Sunday.

The golf gods are shining kindly on Scott. He is the veteran presence on a team of seven rookies, lending his experience and even temperament to calm and motivate his fellow teammates. As an Australian he has a connection to the crowd, something he called upon before the event began when he suggested they shouldn’t cheer for Woods.

“Quite bluntly, we want the home-crowd advantage,” Scott told the Herald-Sun in Melbourne a week before the competition began. “I’ll be disappointed if they are cheering enthusiastically for Tiger or anyone on the U.S. team.”

They were cheering enthusiastically for Scott on Friday, who came into this event with a Presidents Cup record of 14-20-5 and aside from a tie in 2003 has known nothing but defeat to the Americans. He has now contributed two points, giving the Internationals hope they can pull off the upset.

“It will be incredibly disappointing if I played all these and never won a Presidents Cup,” said Scott, the 2013 Masters champion. “I feel I’d be missing something. The last few years, I’ve put more of myself out there for the team, and so far it hasn’t yielded much of a result. It’s never fun leaving on Sunday with not having won the trophy.”

Johnson and Kuchar were actually 2-up after seven holes. But Scott and Oosthuizen won five of the next seven holes to take a commanding lead. The Internationals now have a realistic chance of doing that after their incredible start. Scott credits captain Ernie Els for getting his team prepared.

“He told us his plan early on, and he’s going 100 percent in on that and I love that,” Scott said. “I can get behind someone who is 100 percent in on something. If it doesn’t work out, I admire the fact he’s gone all-in, and I don’t think we’ve ever done that before.”

Despite the youth of squad, Scott insists they can win the Cup.

“I think it would rank very highly for me at this point,” he said. “Like I said at the start of this, this is a real opportunity for us and it will be possibly a team that is remembered after such a long stretch. We need a victory, absolutely. It’s as simple as that, yeah. There’s nothing fun for me to talk about; all my appearances, we’ve come up short.

“I think for a long time, we didn’t have the answers and I think this time, I think we’ve checked a lot of the right boxes coming in, and that’s why I’m also very optimistic, not just about some of the guys who have qualified, and I like what I see in the way they are approaching it, but I like the way Ernie has prepared himself for this team to play well this week.”