There’s a piece of wisdom that Cameron Smith has treasured throughout the highs and lows of his already legendary career. It came from his dad, Des.
In my first professional interaction with Cameron Smith, one of the biggest takeaways was his iron-clad connection to his old man, Des. It was July 2015, and Australian Golf Digest had instructed me to fly to the Sunshine Coast to interview the young pro who had just tied for fourth at the US Open on his major debut.
Sitting down beside the range at Twin Waters Golf Club, where Smith was getting a lesson from his coach, Grant Field, I asked the then 21-year-old what was the best piece of advice he had ever received.
“My old man once said, ‘Some days are diamonds and some days are duck s–t,’” Smith said, prompting me to burst into laughter. The genius was in the simplicity of the saying. Translated from Queensland-speak, it meant: bad days often follow good days, and vice versa. Don’t get too down on yourself, or complacent. Remain even-keeled and good things will happen in golf. “You can rock up one day feeling on top of the world, shoot eight-under par and literally the next day you don’t have a clue what you’re doing,” Smith says. ▶ ▶ ▶
Smith first heard that line as a child when Des, a scratch handicapper, introduced him to golf at Wantima Country Club in the northern suburbs of Brisbane. “When I was little, I’d follow Dad around,” Smith recalls. “He bolted a 90mm plumbing pipe to the side of his buggy and put my little clubs in it. I just fell in love with the game and all I wanted was to play golf professionally.”
Des, who nowadays travels to the US several times a year to spend time with his boy in his adopted hometown of Palm Valley, Florida, recalls a moment at Wantima when Smith was a junior. Golfers in Brisbane generally don’t rush out to play golf in bad weather because they know there’ll be 280 days a year of sunshine. But Smith was wired differently. “I was the sub-junior co-ordinator at our club, and we started running a nine-hole competition,” Des says. “One day I had to call it off because of rain and storms. But Cam begged me to play. He said, ‘Dad, you can’t call it off. I play better in the rain.’ He wasn’t even 10 years old, and he saw bad weather as a challenge he could overcome.”
KNOCKING OFF THE OLD MAN
Outplaying his dad on the course also became a challenge Smith wanted to take on, and he finally did, aged 12. Smith shot 69 to break par and beat his dad for the first time in the same round.
“It was a pretty quiet car ride home,” Smith laughs. “To this day it’s still something I’m proud of. He hates when I talk about it, but I remember clearly. It gave me a boost I really needed at that stage as a junior golfer. I was competing against other juniors, but not that often. I was just competing against Dad, and I finally got him.
“I got so lucky. I have the best parents you could have asked for as a junior. Mum and Dad dragged me all over the country to compete in tournaments. If it wasn’t for them, I definitely wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Ironically, Des wasn’t there in person when his son waltzed up the 18th fairway at St Andrews in July 2022 during the biggest moment of his career. The mullet-wearing Queenslander shot a final-round 64 to defeat Cameron Young and Rory McIlroy at the 150th Open Championship. Des had only weeks prior opted out of the trip, but was an emotional wreck when Smith’s manager, Bud Martin, made sure to call him in Brisbane as Smith’s winning putt dropped for a St Andrews record total of 20-under par.
“I was bawling my eyes out speaking to him,” Des said. “I was so proud of him. All the hard work he’d done had paid off.”
LIV-ING HIS BEST LIFE
Last year’s Open Championship was the third PGA Tour victory of 2022 for Smith, after triumphing at the Tournament of Champions in Hawaii and the elite Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass. Smith also went on to win a LIV Golf event in Chicago after he joined the league last September, before signing off on a breakthrough year with a win at the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland.
In the latter half of the year, though, Smith faced some criticism for his decision to leave the PGA Tour as a six-time winner and on his way to establishing a legacy, for the rival LIV Golf league. The outside world did not understand the lure of Smith’s generational, guaranteed-money offer from LIV, as well as a promise to take a LIV tournament to Australia and a three-month offseason for its 48 star players. Smith was criticised by golf greats like former Masters winner Fred Couples, who mocked Smith for saying “it had been tough to miss family and friends’ weddings in Australia” due to the PGA Tour’s wraparound schedule. Smith didn’t bite back, and credits his parents for that.
“I got some great advice from my family and team,” Smith says. “My agent, Bud, helped me navigate things. He has been around the game for a long time. Being an Open champion came with a responsibility to make the right decision or maybe hold something back you want to say, but it was also the way my parents [Des and mother, Sharon] raised me.”
In 2023, Smith has worked hard to try to live up to his historic season. Producing an encore to a year in which you become only the second player after Jack Nicklaus (1978) to win the Players Championship and The Open in the same year, is not easy. But Smith has a LIV victory in London, and top-10s at the PGA Championship (tied ninth) and US Open (fourth) to his name this year.
As he navigates the next phase of his career, which will include the chase for major No.2, Smith will no doubt lean on Des’ “diamonds and duck s–t” philosophy.
“It’s something that has always stuck with me; I’ve taken that philosophy through my whole career,” he says. “You can work so hard at this game and sometimes it seems like you go backwards. I think that saying has really made me become a process type of person. I really make sure to tick the boxes, do the right things in the gym and trust the results will come. As a young professional, it’s pretty easy to get in your own head and there have been times in my career when I don’t know if I’m really cut out for this. But I stuck to [Dad’s] philosophy and kept it working and it eventually paid off.”
At age 30, there’s no doubt that mindset will keep paying off for Smith. Watching on, from inside the ropes or afar, will be one proud dad.
