British Open 2026, golf: Cameron Smith makes putter switch at Royal Birkdale, cut line for Open Championship, scores

As eye-catching as Smith’s opening nine was, with the Queenslander making four birdies in the first eight holes, it was the appearance of a mallet putter in his hands instead of his trusty blade that caught the most attention.

The Ripper GC captain said he had been mulling a shift in equipment in recent weeks and decided he could do with a little extra heft provided by the mallet. It came to the fore on 18, when he was able to scramble from 30 metres to save par.

“I have been kind of messing around with it a little bit at home over the last couple of weeks and it just felt really nice, so decided to put it in. It’s a little bit heavier,” Smith said.

“On these slower greens, it kind of helps get the ball to the hole, which I didn’t struggle with today. It just feels nice … for my hands. (It is a) touch shorter, I think, and I just feel like I can get over it and hit it, so, yeah, it’s a nice feeling.”

Smith has been using his former putter since 2019 and it brought him significant success on the PGA Tour, which included his Players Championship success in 2022 prior to his career-defining moment at St Andrews a few months later.

But he has been in a lull in recent years and, if he fails to make the cut, will have missed eight of the past nine weekends in majors punctuated only be a tie for 7th in the US PGA Championship in May.

“The old putter’s been with me … since the start of 2020, so it’s been around a fair bit, and it’s only had a couple of rounds off,” he said.

“I’ve switched it in and out here and there, and you know I’ve thought, ‘What am I doing?’ I don’t think it’s out forever. I just think, you know, (I wanted something) a bit heavier. It just feels really nice, the new one, at the moment, so we’ll see.”

After shooting a 2-over 72 on Thursday, Smith said he felt like he was playing well, but paying the price for missing the fairways by a metre or two too frequently on a course that is running.

He was superb on Friday morning, a fluffed chip aside on the 6th hole which interrupted his momentum, with one punter in the crowd claiming he heard the Aussie say; “That’s a shit shot.”

But it is not the shot that hurt him the most. Smith, who was full of praise for his Ripper GC teammate Lucas Herbert and kept an eye on the scoreboard during the Victorian’s stunning second round, paid the price for a poor shot on the Par 3 15th green.

“That’s right. (It was) just one bad swing,” he said.

“But, you know, that’s the golf course in major championships. They just constantly ask questions, and if you hit a bad one, you have got to back it up with a good one.”

Cameron Smith with the mallet putterSource: FOX SPORTS

“I felt good. I kept hitting quality shots, just didn’t quite hit it as close as the front nine (when the) wind kind of got up a little bit,” he said.

“It was playing a touch tricky. It was just hard to get it in there tight. The first seven or eight holes, it was still pretty much no wind. It was nice to take advantage of that while the conditions were good.”

But is it enough? Smith feels 1-over would have kept his weekend busy but said that if the wind picked up on Friday afternoon, the course was not going to get any easier.

“I don’t want to jinx myself. The golf course isn’t going to get any easier,” he said.

“It was like that yesterday afternoon. It’s going to be a touch windier maybe this afternoon. We’ll wait and see. It would have been nice to have one more. I feel like, if I got in at 1-over … I’d be pretty comfortable. We’ll see what the afternoon holds.”

SOUTHPORT, ENGLAND – JULY 17: Cameron Smith of Australia lines up putt shot on the fourth green on day two of the The 154th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale on July 17, 2026 in Southport, England. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images