Our man Matt Cleary followed Cameron Smith for 18 holes in round one of the PGA Championship on Thursday, and observed that while the man's mid-iron play isn't (yet) laser-guided, his short game garnered him six up-and-downs, two sand saves, four birdies, and a score of two-under 69 in the wind at Royal Queensland.
Outside its subtle mounding, raised greens and steep-lipped bunkers, Royal Queensland is flatter than a bad gag by a best man. It’s the Dead Sea in the doldrums. It’s Nullarbor Flat.
Not to say it’s bad. Far from it. It’s a cracking, group one golf course in outstanding condition. Royal Queensland is pure. That our man Mike Clayton re-designed it into such a fun and strategic go-round on such an unprepossessing tract of land between Eagle Farm's industrial estate and the shipping lanes of the Brisbane River, should win him an award at the next golf architect convention or wherever it is these people convene to talk shop.
RQ is all nuanced, swaley greens, flame trees that blind the weary driver, and mighty Moreton Bay figs with boughs of such thickness and foliage of such density that they could support many families of Ewoks in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi. They're a great tree, the big fig.
And RQ is, without question, a championship layout.
We're here for DP World Tour’s first stop in another evergreen season, the 2025 PGA Championship of Australia. And even after an overnight deluge, RQ remains tight-cut and fast, and a top test of the top golfers in the land, and other lands.
One of those is Cameron Smith, sent out this morning at what Robin Williams would call the “Oh my God it’s early hour” of 06:00 in a group that contained fellow marquee men Min Woo Lee and the lusty bomber and DP World Tour No.2, Marco Penge.
We’re up ourselves after an $8 (eight, Gema Group? Eight?) flat white coffee to see, in the main, the 2022 Open champion and The Players champion, the local hero who, since running second in this event last year, has been riding the crest of a slump. Without a win, some middling stuff in LIV, four missed cuts in four cracks at the majors.
What we see over the next 18 holes, however, reminds us, if we ever needed reminding, that class is permanent. And that Smith, despite tee-to-green numbers befitting Bubba Watson or 2025 Cameron Smith, say, will card two-under 69 despite missing six of 14 fairways and eight of 18 greens.
The man’s short game remains elite. His chipping, particularly, in the stiff, grainy Tahoma 31 bermudagrass is a marvel. Six times he gets up and down. Twice he saves from sand. He makes four birdies. He requires just 26 putts.
On 12, the short par-4, out comes driver, while his playing partners take hybrids. The latter both finish pin-high left, Smith short front right in the pot. All three make birdies in manifold ways; Lee and Penge with beautiful bump-n-runs under branches and over swales, Smith with a soft waft from the sand.
And the locals murmur – here he comes, our boy. C’mon, Smithy. For they, too, are here to see if their champion can catch fire. Or even show some heat, some flames. Even embers, Smithy, embers! We would take embers.
Onto 13 and Smith misses the green left but conjures a chip of sublimity and soft hands. For Smith and many of these guys, it’s an “easy” one. Waft it onto the green, run it out, check it near the hole. For we, the mug amateur, the chopper, the handicapped, we’d be afraid of blading it off the bounce into a Moreton Bay fig and murdering many Ewok.
Smith told press the day before that he’s hoping to care less about his misses, as he once cared less when winning many times. He thinks he’s been taking too much on, rather than just wandering about, “playing” golf, hair gamboling out the back of his hat like Farrah Fawcett on holiday (Google her, kids), and strolling fairways with the air of a long-term tourist of Mullumbimby.
Smith smashes driver up guts on 14, misses the green, wafts a wedge to tap-in, the 52-degree Titleist Vokey SM10 an extension of his mind. Dr Bob Rotella advises golfers to get to know their wedges, or words to that effect, and it’s clear Smith has a trusting relationship with his 8620 carbon steel implements forged by experts in Japan.
Or maybe he’s just good at chipping.
Either way, he chips to tap-in on 15 and makes birdie. On 16 he hooks it high over a Moreton Bay fig. The Chef follows suit, same line, same Ewok slaughterhouse mentality. A bump-n-run is not-inch-perfect, balances on a mound and rolls into a basin. There’s a bogey. They happen – even for someone as good as our man, Smith, the new Dr Up-and-Downski.
Then, on 17, he nearly sends the following video viral around the universe...
@golfaustraliamagazine Cam Smith on the 17th Party Hole at RQ, day one of the PGA Championship. And lo, it was nearly party time.
♬ sonido original - Feel Music💘🎶
And so, onwards we roll, fine shots and rougher ones, one birdie, one bogey, Smith doing his best to record a decent and competitive score despite not enjoying his best stuff. Post-round the man is positive about two-under 69 in conditions that weren’t as humid as Sumatra in the Wet but nor was it Glasgow by night.
“It was actually pretty calm this morning and then we got our third or fourth hole and the wind got up, and then I think with all these storms around it started swirling a little bit and then really started pumping in the last kind of nine holes. So conditions are good!” Smith said
“I feel like the greens are firmer and faster than they've ever been, so you get it in a few spots around the greens that in previous years, maybe, wouldn't have been too bad. But you have your hands full, for sure. It’s definitely playing a lot different.”
So is C.Smith. There are good signs, sports fans. There are good signs.
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