{"id":805766,"date":"2026-07-17T08:59:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T08:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/805766\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T08:59:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T08:59:13","slug":"open-championship-2026-bag-of-nerves-aussie-proud-of-courageous-start-at-birkdale-australian-golf-digest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/805766\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Championship 2026: Bag-of-nerves Aussie proud of courageous start at Birkdale \u2013 Australian Golf Digest"},"content":{"rendered":"

[EPA PHOTO] Travis Smyth enjoyed his return to the Open Championship after overcoming his extreme nerves at Birkdale. <\/p>\n

Travis Smyth made it sound like a rare old ordeal but the Australian hopeful was left proud of himself after he overcame dreadful nerves to acquit himself proudly on his return to the Open Championship.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Seven-strong Aussie contingent all fail to break par on opening day<\/a><\/p>\n

The 31-year-old Sydneysider, who sank a hole-in-one the first time he made the Open at Royal Liverpool in 2023, was back on the big stage which he\u2019d continued to covet on Thursday, but wasn\u2019t about to hide just how racked with nerves he was to be back at Royal Birkdale.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve only played three majors. I still shit myself on the first tee! It\u2019s still not easy yet. It\u2019s never going to be easy,\u201d sighed Smyth, who reckoned he had a lot of prove after booking his place again as the PGA Tour of Australasia Order of Merit winner.<\/p>\n

\"\"[EPA PHOTO] Travis Smyth holed in one the last time he was at the Open down the road at Hoylake in 2023. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how many fairways I hit, but I made it so hard for myself out there. I was extremely nervous, didn\u2019t feel like I was playing that well. I just struggled off the tee a little bit and made it hard work for myself.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I was really proud of the way that I hung in there. It could have got pretty messy, pretty easily. Didn\u2019t hit many greens but sort of grinded out a lot of pars. I shot a one-over par 71 in the end \u2014 and now I can go out tomorrow and have a great round.\u201d<\/p>\n

This time around, Smyth believes he\u2019s better equipped to deal with all the hoopla surrounding major fare, having won at the Japan-Australasia Championship and International Series Japan this season.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Open Championship 2026: Travis Smyth\u2019s description of Scottie Scheffler was refreshingly\u2026 Aussie<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019m ready to compete this time,\u201d he said. \u201cLast time I was just like a deer in headlights, didn\u2019t really know what was going on. Everything was a completely new experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just great. Majors are where you want to play, and it\u2019s awesome. Pretty much every hole, apart from 16, was filled with people that are just parked up there for the day, plus people walking around. The atmosphere was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also felt he had struck lucky in his build-up this week, hardly able to credit he\u2019d had nine holes of practice on Wednesday with world No.1 Scottie Scheffler.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatching the precision of his iron play was amazing. It was kind of demoralising a little bit too. It was like, \u2018damn, when I play good, I don\u2019t think I have that in me\u2019,\u201d smiled Smyth.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it was good. It lights a fire in my stomach and makes me want to work hard. Now that I\u2019ve seen what No.1 in the world looks like, a little bit of a taste \u2014 it was only nine holes, but it was a great experience watching him play.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a lovely guy, really down to earth, which I\u2019m happy about, too. He\u2019s not like a dickhead or anything! So it was good.\u201d<\/p>\n

MORE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP COVERAGE HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[EPA PHOTO] Travis Smyth enjoyed his return to the Open Championship after overcoming his extreme nerves at Birkdale.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,375701,755,1657,85,1742,265666],"class_list":["post-805766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-birkdale","tag-golf","tag-scottie-scheffler","tag-sports","tag-the-open","tag-travis-smyth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805766","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=805766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}