There could be light at the end of the tunnel for LIV Golf star Cam Smith after a miserable season, with the 2022 Open champion in with a shot of ending his campaign in style at the Australian Open
Cam Smith is in the hunt for victory at the Australian Open(Image: Andy Cheung/Getty Images)
Cam Smith’s season of misery could end on a high note, with the struggling LIV Golf star in contention to win his native Australian Open after a strong third round.
Smith has gone winless in 2025, and he had missed seven successive cuts before making the weekend at Royal Melbourne. But after moving up the leaderboard with a six-under-par 65 in the second round, he backed it up with a 66 on Saturday to reach 12-under-par for the tournament.
Smith is in a tie for second place with Carlos Ortiz and Si Woo Kim, two shots adrift of 54-hole leader Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen. It is a far cry from the disaster that the 2022 Open champion endured at the Australian PGA Championship a week ago.
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Yet it did not feel all that good for Smith during the third round. He may have been satisfied with the outcome, with a big chance to end a two-year winless streak, but it seems he is still lacking confidence heading into the final round.
“I just feel like I didn’t have my best stuff out there today. I definitely didn’t feel as comfortable over the ball,” the former world No. 2 said.
“But just kind of went through the process and hit the right shots, and didn’t really shy away from that. So I was happy I did that. That was probably what I was most impressed with.”
Smith’s decline has been stark. The 32-year-old was one of the elite players in the sport at the time of his Open triumph at St. Andrews, regularly competing for major wins.
He made a strong start to life on LIV when he made the leap to the breakaway tour soon after getting his hands on the Claret Jug, winning three times within 12 months en route to a second-place finish in the 2023 Individual Championship.
But he has not tasted victory on any tour since, and he hit new lows this season by missing the cut at all four major championships.
So what will the Aussie have to do in the final round in Melbourne to end his barren run?
“I think you’ve just got to play the golf course; I know it sounds very cliched, but there are some golf courses where you can just get out there and hit it at the pin all day to try to shoot eight or nine-under, but it’s not this place,” he said.
“If you play the right shots, hopefully you can get yourself into position to win the last few holes.”
Smith is in the final group alongside Neergaard-Petersen and Kim, and they will tee off at 7:50 p.m. ET.
Fellow Australian stars Adam Scott and Min Woo Lee are also in the mix at 10-under-par.