[Photo: Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia]
Cameron Smith was devastated and longed to restore his major-winning form of 2022 after enduring another missed cut, this time at the Australian PGA Championship in tough scenes at Royal Queensland.
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It means the former Open Championship winner, a member at Royal Queensland, has missed the weekend in all seven events that offered Official World Golf Ranking points this year – including the four majors and two Asian Tour events.
It’s a tough result for three-time Australian PGA winner Smith, who loves the Royal Queensland course having claimed the 2022 edition there in front of family and friends after a breakout year in which he claimed The Open at St Andrews and the Players Championship.
Rubbing salt in the wound is the fact the 2025 Australian PGA will be the last edition at Royal Queensland before the course undergoes renovations to host the golf tournament of the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane.
Starting round two on Friday just outside of contention at two-under-par, Smith was looking good when he climbed to three-under with a birdie at No.2 on Friday.
But it unravelled from there.
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Bogeys at the fourth, 11th, 13th and 14th had Smith scrambling. Needing a miraculous finish, Smith only managed par on the par-5 15th after missing a six-foot birdie putt on the last par 5 on the course. He narrowly missed a birdie putt from about 15 feet on the 16th. Smith hit his tee shot at the par-3 17th to eight feet and the party hole erupted when he made the birdie to claw a shot back to even par.
The cutline was projected at two-under when Smith teed off on the 18th meaning it was likely he needed a hole-out eagle on the par 4 – at the very least a birdie – to make it on the number or risk a nervous wait to see if the cutline dropped a shot. But at 18, Smith made a double-bogey to shoot 75 (four-over) and drop to two over, well outside the cut line which was projected late on Friday night at two-under. New Zealand’s Kazuma Kobori led the tournament after a sizzling 63 took him to 10-under.
The affable 32-year-old Smith front up to media and was visibly emotional at his performance this week and this year.
“Yep, it was shit,” he said when asked if it was a tough day at the office. “If you had have told me that was going to happen this morning, when I was warming up, I’d have told you otherwise. I don’t know, I just don’t know. I am so confused. I was feeling good, really confident and just couldn’t get anything going. It was weird. I was in between clubs a lot today. Hit a couple of bad shots that I would have liked to have again. Drove the ball well .. hit a lot of nice shots. Tough lies killed me today … and then couldn’t get up and down.”
Smith welcomed his first child before the Masters in April where he missed the cut, before exiting the PGA, US Open after he lost a family member and had to make a quick dash from the US to Brisbane, as well as the Open Championship at Portrush. He then missed the cut at the Dunhill Links event in Scotland on the DP World Tour as well as last week’s Saudi International on the Asian Tour.
He said it was tough not to zoom out and overthink the year as a whole.
“It can definitely get in your head, I think it is in my head; It’s just frustrating,” Smith said. “It’s been my story of the year, feel I’ve worked hard all year and got nothing out of it. I do know what the answer is, it’s just to keep working hard and try to be patient. I’ve tried to do all the right stuff, for whatever reason it’s not coming together on the course.”
The Queenslander is renowned for switching off away from tournaments but conceded golf was more on his mind than usual.
“I don’t think about golf often but in the last couple of months I’ve thought about it a lot and I want to get back to where I was,” Smith said of 2022, when he rose to world No.2 courtesy of three PGA Tour wins, including a major, and a LIV Golf victory prior to a third Joe Kirkwood Cup triumph at Royal Queensland.
Smith will dust himself off and head to Melbourne on Monday where he’ll launch a bid for a maiden Australian Open victory given the Stonehaven Cup has eluded him in the past, including a playoff loss to Jordan Spieth in 2016. It’s unlikely Smith will get to Melbourne any earlier now that he’s exited the Australian PGA early.
“I’m due to Melbourne Monday anyway, which is plenty of time,” Smith said. “I’ve played a lot of golf down there. I feel like I don’t need to rush.”
With a star-studded Australian Open field at Royal Melbourne’s Composite course to be headlined by reigning Masters champion Rory McIlroy, Smith will be a part of the most exciting Australian Open in recent times as he chases the non-major trophy he wants the most.
“I was already excited to be there really; it’s going to be a great event, starting to come into its own and I’m excited to get down there and give it a crack,” Smith said.
