saw him miss the cut in all four majors and two Official World Golf Rankings events<\/a>, including last week\u2019s Asian Tour International Series event in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\nOff the course, life couldn\u2019t be better with Smith and his wife welcoming a baby boy in April.<\/p>\n
The disappointing tournament results, though, have lit a fire in the belly of a truly world-class player who knows his resume includes a Players Championship, a breakthrough major at the 150th Open Championship at St Andrews, three LIV Golf titles and the three Australian PGAs. The last one came at the end of a career-defining 2022 season here at Royal Queensland with family and friends in the gallery.<\/p>\n
Now, that family has grown and former world No.2 Smith brought his son Remy to Australia for the first time on this trip. Smith\u2019s eyes lit up when reminded that if he were to win a fourth Joe Kirkwood Cup this week (after wins in 2017, \u201918 and \u201922), it would be his first trophy with his boy in attendance.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah that would be cool; I haven\u2019t really thought about that because I\u2019ve been playing like c\u2013p but that would be awesome and maybe that\u2019s a good thing to think about and get me amped up for this week,\u201d Smith told Australian Golf Digest on Monday.<\/p>\n
Smith has had some decent play this year; he finished runner-up twice on the LIV Golf circuit including the UK leg where he drove the ball beautifully and struck his irons pure only for his wedges to show rust. The two LIV second placings were among eight top-10s on a league that features Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton. But his play in tournaments with world rankings, particularly the four majors, were tough to swallow for a player with a runner-up and numerous top-five results at Augusta National, a claret jug victory and career top-10s at the US open and PGA.<\/p>\n
Smith just hasn\u2019t been able to have all facets of his game fire together this year. He hopes the good vibes of being home in Australia trigger a special fortnight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to [the Australian PGA and Open],\u201d Smith said of the two Australian majors on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia calendar. \u201cI feel like the game\u2019s in a good enough spot to compete. Obviously, Royal Queensland is a course that I love and have played well at. I think just being at home brings that [playfulness] back a little bit as well, and obviously having success here at \u2018RQ\u2019 probably helps. I\u2019m trying to go out there and not worry about it so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armchair pundits may say Smith needs to win one of the next two events with world-class fields to remind the game of his pedigree. While that would be nice for the 32-year-old, he pushes back that he \u201cneeds\u201d to do anything. He has never played golf that way, even in his best years.<\/p>\n
The Australian PGA has a host of big names at Royal Queensland such as English star Marco Penge, his fellow PGA Tour 2026 member Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, as well as Australian big guns Min Woo Lee, Adam Scott and LIV Golf Miami winner Marc Leishman. Next week, the Australian Open will see Masters champion Rory McIlroy headline a star-studded field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never really played with expectations, so, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything that I really need to do,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI think what I need to do is prepare well and and then just forget about it, to be honest. I\u2019ve got good memories from last year [to also use as fuel].\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, Smith was in the final group at a rain-shortened, 54-hole Australian PGA but finished second to a barnstorming Elvis Smylie. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a good tournament; we got quite lucky to even finish the tournament, to be fair, with the weather,\u201d Smith said. \u201cBut it\u2019s always a good week here in Brissie and I\u2019ve always loved this place, so hopefully I can go out and put on a great performance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cameron Smith has set a new goal to turn around a \u201cfrustrating\u201d year and finish it on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,173766,3193,755,139396,163416,29460,85],"class_list":["post-304606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-pga","tag-cameron-smith","tag-golf","tag-majors","tag-pga-tour-of-australasia","tag-royal-queensland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}