Five-time major champion Rory McIlroy survives to fight another day at the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
Smith sank six birdies to share fourth place on 7-under with fellow Australian major winner Adam Scott and Mexican Carlos Ortiz.<\/p>\n
It will be more of the same for Smith on ‘moving day’, the colloquial title given to the third round, as he looks to chase down co-leaders Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen and Daniel Rodrigues, who are 9-under for the tournament.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think I need to do anything different,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
“That (second round) was just really solid, really committed to shapes, and shots and flights. It was just nice to do that. I gained a lot of confidence out of that.”<\/p>\n
Despite describing himself as a “pretty gritty player”, Smith cut a casual figure as he strode the fairways in his second round, playing alongside rising Australian star Elvis Smylie and Englishman Danny Willett.<\/p>\n
The laid-back Queenslander seemed to thrive on the fact much of the spectator interest surrounded the star-studded trio of Rory McIlroy, Min Woo Lee and Scott, who were playing ahead of his group.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cameron Smith (right) played with Danny Willett during the second round on Friday. (Getty Images: Josh Chadwick)<\/p>\n
That is not to say the galleries following Smith, Smylie and Willett were lacking in numbers, as there was enough fan support to create a vibrant atmosphere.<\/p>\n
“There wasn’t yelling and screaming out there, thank God,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
“There was a lot of people. But it was good fun out there.”<\/p>\n
Smith’s form line ahead of the Australian Open might have left tournament organisers anxious about whether one of their drawcards would be playing this weekend.<\/p>\n
After a promising start to the Australian PGA Championship in Brisbane last week, Smith capitulated in his second round to miss the cut at 2-over.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old comfortably avoided the same fate in Melbourne but stressed he did not travel to the Victorian capital just to make up the numbers.<\/p>\n
“I’m not here to make the cut,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
“I’m here to win the Stonehaven Cup and I’ve put myself in a good spot to do that, so I’m really happy with that.”<\/p>\n
Smith, Scott and Ortiz will tee off in the second-last group of the third round at 11.39am AEDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Cameron Smith was asked what it would take for him to win the Australian Open ahead of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[5487,64,63,6571,3193,755,5488,184786,756,11544,171805,85,184785],"class_list":["post-330249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-adam-scott","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-open","tag-cameron-smith","tag-golf","tag-min-woo-lee","tag-moving-day","tag-rory-mcilroy","tag-royal-melbourne","tag-second-round","tag-sports","tag-third-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330249","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=330249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}