Cameron Smith overtook Tiger Woods as the most Googled golfer in Australia in 2022, Australian Golf Digest can reveal.
Data provided from Google has listed Smith – who won five times around the world this year including the 150th Open Championship at St Andrews – as No.1 in searches for golfers within Australia. Smith was followed by 15-time Major winner Woods, then Rory McIlroy, Paige Spiranac and Masters champion Scottie Scheffler at No.5. The top 10 are featured below.
Spiranac, a former pro golfer who now hosts the Playing A Round podcast, and New Zealand’s LPGA superstar, Lydia Ko, were the only non-PGA Tour players in the top 10. There were no Australian women professionals featured in the top 10 despite Perth native Minjee Lee winning the U.S. Women’s Open for her second career Major.
The most “googled” golf topics can be broken out by categories—golfer, golf-related terms and golf questions. To get a top-10 ranking in each, Google ranked searches according to its trends data within the search engine—analysing “search interest” for subjects using a sample of all searches and then indexing the topics in relation to the top item on each list. Google did not provide raw numbers for the year regarding search volume.
Smith had a breakout year, highlighted by a third at the Masters where he played in the final group with eventual winner Scottie Scheffler. Months later in July, the 29-year-old Smith claimed his first major win at the 150th Open at St Andrews. Smith’s final round 64 was underlined by a back nine score of 30 – the lowest nine holes ever by a major champion in the final round. It was the third of Smith’s three PGA Tour wins this year; he won the Tournament of Champions in January and the elite Players Championship in March. In August, Smith left the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf, where he won its Chicago event in his second start. Last month, Smith returned to 72-hole strokeplay at the Australian PGA Championship, where he won the DP World Tour-sanctioned event.
McIlroy, who won three PGA Tour events, including the season-ending Tour Championship and with it the FedEx Cup title, finished third in Google searches of golfers by Australian users. Additionally, McIlroy won the DP World Tour’s season-long points title and finished in the top 10 in all four majors. He shared the lead entering the final round of the Open at St Andrews—and was the crowd favourite to claim the claret jug—only to finish third to Smith.
For golf-related terms, LIV Golf topped the list in 2022, while “Golf scores” was second. “Australian Open golf” came third, but generated 35.68 per cent of the search interest compared with LIV Golf.
LIV, controversially financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, launched this year with two-time Open Championship winner Greg Norman as its chief executive. The upstart league debuted with seven tournaments that featured 54 holes with no cut, 48-player fields and $25 million purses. A $50 million team finale was then held at Trump Doral in Miami. LIV lured a host of stars away from the PGA Tour including World No. 3 Smith and fellow major winners such as Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed.
In terms of golf questions searched for, “What is LIV Golf?” was No.1 while No.2 also related to LIV. Below are the top 10.
Top questions on golf in 2022
- What is liv golf?
- What does liv golf stand for?
- How many golf clubs allowed in bag?
- Where is augusta national golf course?
- How to play golf?
- How to hit a golf ball?
- When was golf invented?
- How to clean golf clubs?
- What is a birdie in golf?
- How to watch liv golf tour?
