Cameron Smith has a simple answer for what he will be doing during the Players Championship this week. The reigning Players and Open Championship champion, who left the PGA Tour in September as a six-time winner to join LIV Golf, will be fishing on the waterways around Jacksonville in Florida.
It’s his biggest passion outside golf.
“I think it’ll be a pretty quiet week on the water,” Smith told Australian Golf Digest at LIV Golf’s season-opening event two weeks ago in Mexico. “I think all the residents will be out watching the golf tournament. So I’ll be able to strap out and have the water to myself.”
Indeed, while the 29-year-old Queenslander is out on his boat trying to reel in redfish, the tournament he won at TPC Sawgrass last year will take over Ponte Vedra Beach. Smith has lived in the area since 2016, and it’s also where the PGA Tour is headquartered.
Smith one-putted eight of his final nine holes to win the 2022 Players title in a thrilling Monday finish. But now as a LIV golfer, Smith and his fellow recruits to the rival league are prohibited from playing PGA Tour events. Smith is one of 31 golfers now on LIV who teed up in last year’s Players, including the top three on the final leaderboard: Smith, runner-up Anirban Lahiri of India and English veteran Paul Casey.
Smith is just the fourth Players champion not to defend his title in its history, and first since an injured Tiger Woods missed the 2014 edition.
Beyond his tour ban, Smith lost his member playing privileges at TPC Sawgrass, where he had refined his game in the past few years and improved it to the world-class level he was playing in 2022. The tour also changed Smith’s reserved car space – a year-long perk as the defending champion – to now read, “Tour players only.”
Not all signs of Smith’s victory have been removed from TPC Sawgrass. Inside the clubhouse, a caricature of him accompanied by a description of his win is on display, along with a pitching wedge he used during his one-shot victory over Lahiri. The Australian flag is also still flying outside the clubhouse, a symbolic year-round gesture made to the most recent winner.
“He’s one of our champions and history speaks for itself,” Players Championship executive director Jared Rice told Australian Golf Digest in a statement. “The play of all of our past champions speaks for itself. But 2023 is about the players who will be here.”
Smith says he will also spend the latter half of the week preparing for LIV Golf’s next tournament, from March 17-19 at The Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, a course that once hosted the WGC–Accenture Match Play.
After that, Smith heads to LIV’s event in Orlando the week before the Masters. The Aussie has set his sights on bettering last year’s tie for third at Augusta National, where he played in the final group with eventual winner Scottie Scheffler. “I’m definitely looking to be in contention a few times leading up to [the Masters], for sure,” Smith said, having finished sixth, four shots behind winner Charles Howell III in Mayakoba.
“After a few months’ offseason [and nine months since the last Major of 2022, Smith’s Open win], the nerves may be a little bit different. They may be the same; I’m not really sure yet,” he said. “I haven’t been in that spot [for a while], but I’m hoping I can do much more of the same at Augusta as I did last year. I’ve definitely got that fire in the belly.”
