{"id":610015,"date":"2026-04-16T05:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T05:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/610015\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T05:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T05:12:13","slug":"new-and-improved-smyth-returns-to-liv-golf-as-a-wild-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/610015\/","title":{"rendered":"New-and-improved Smyth returns to LIV Golf as a Wild Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEXICO CITY \u2013 You may or may not remember Travis Smyth<\/a>\u2019s three LIV Golf starts during the inaugural 2022 season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you do remember that version of him, you definitely won\u2019t recognize him now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old Australian is returning to the LIV Golf lineup for this week\u2019s tournament in Mexico City<\/a>. He\u2019ll tee off Thursday at Club de Golf Chapultepec as a Wild Card player, filling the spot that opened with Scott Vincent<\/a> moving into the starting lineup this week for HyFlyers GC<\/a> to replace Phil Mickelson<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be Smyth\u2019s first LIV Golf start since the last weekend in July of 2022 when he finished solo 22nd at LIV Golf Bedminster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Asked how his game has changed in the ensuing four years, Smyth replied Wednesday: \u201cTotally different. I used to do some funky stuff with my swing; I was working with a pretty out-there golf coach at the time. My body was really average, and I had some lower back issues at the time. I was pretty much a mess back then.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a much better player now. Super-pumped to see how I stack up against these guys now since I\u2019m in some good form.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Actually, he\u2019s in great form, having won the Japan-Australasia Championship last month and the International Series Japan earlier this month<\/a> for two wins in his last three starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He currently leads the International Series season-long rankings<\/a> and the Asian Tour Order of Merit<\/a> \u2013 and that\u2019s after claiming the PGA Tour of Australasia Order of Merit earlier this year.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also a career-best 135th in the latest world rankings and already has guaranteed spots in both the PGA Championship and Open Championship this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEXICO CITY \u2013 You may or may not remember Travis Smyth\u2019s three LIV Golf starts during the inaugural…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-610015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610015","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=610015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}