Smith linked with the American in May after splitting with long-time coach Grant Field and, ahead of this week’s Open at Royal Birkdale, is upbeat about adding to his 2022 crown.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old missed the cut at his most recent event, the US Open at Shinnecock in June, but put his early exit at the third major of the year down to a “shitty start”.<\/p>\n
“I actually played half-decent – we had that foggy, windy morning and just got off to a shitty start, and you can’t be on the back foot of the US Open, and I was from about the sixth hole, but the game still felt good there,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
“I feel like the stuff with Claude is slowly starting to grain in and feel a little bit more natural, like I don’t have to think about it so much and can just get back to kind of hitting shots, which is what you need to do at a British Open.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You need to be creative. You need to hit shots low and high, so it’s come at a good time.”<\/p>\n
Smith switched up his usual approach to a tournament and arrived at the Merseyside course almost a week ago to fine-tune his preparation.<\/p>\n
“I am usually not one to treat a major differently, but given I hadn’t played for a few weeks, I thought it was probably necessary to come over early and play some links golf and get ready,” the former world No.2 said.<\/p>\n
A loud and proud supporter of the Australian Open, Smith was asked what organisers could do to lure world No.1 Scottie Scheffler to play at Kingston Heath in December.<\/p>\n
The Queenslander had a very Aussie response, saying “meat pies and flat whites” should do the trick.<\/p>\n
“Meat pies and flat white. He is a coffee snob, Scottie, so I think we really need to sell him on the flat whites,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
He said the event should look to attract golfers beyond second-ranked Rory McIlroy, who proved a massive hit with crowds in 2025, and Scheffler, who has flagged his interest.<\/p>\n
“You look at what the Aussie Open was 20 or 30 years ago and they’ve got a long way to go to get back to that, but I feel like we’re trending in the right direction, particularly after last year,” Smith said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It was awesome to see the crowd down there in Melbourne and Rory come down and a few other blokes, but yeah, I feel like we need a few more.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Smith linked with the American in May after splitting with long-time coach Grant Field and, ahead of this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-801540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801540","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=801540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}