With each missed cut in a major, with each mid-field finish in LIV, with each statistical illustration of how far this once-mighty golfer has fallen, the whispers have become murmurs have become outright assertions. And, today, the full-blown Accepted Group Think is that Cam Smith's golf game is cooked because he went to LIV Golf. Matt Cleary requests that you allow him to retort.
So many so-called experts – and, as they said of many a poor boy who’d visited that house in New Orleans, by god, I know I’m one – would posit that the three-round, limited field, no-cut LIV format has dulled the competitive edge, the steel, the very game, of Australia’s most recent men’s major winner and the Champion Golfer of the Year in 2022.
The knock is that playing three rounds of golf 14 times a year - and being paid up front - is poor preparation for 72-hole major championship "legacy" golf, especially so since so many of the other best players in the world are preparing for 72-hole tournaments by playing 72-hole tournaments.
But we don't know that in Smith's case. Could be he’s playing shit golf because it’s golf, and sometimes you play shit golf. Maybe he's just in a slump, his first ever one, and he's not sure what to do.
But to blame where he’s playing and how often, when it doesn't make any difference to the major fortunes of so many of his compatriots, is … well. I don’t agree. Indeed I think it's bullshit.
Regardless, it’s Smith’s fault that we’re asking. Because the man’s good was so very, very good indeed. For a time in 2022, it was the very best golf there was on earth.
For it was but three short years ago that we stayed up stupid-late to watch him sublimely roll his ball over so many swales on the Old Course at St Andrews, and raise that famous Claret Jug, and get the hump with a journo asked him was he off to LIV Golf five minutes into a press conference that was all set to be a coronation, and be about his glory, his legacy, how many tinnies he could fit in said jug, and so on.
And today those media fiends are asking again, friend, as, one suspects, are you: how can the man who won the Players Championship and reached No.2 in the world in 2022, the man who went to LIV and in 2023 ran T6 in the Masters, T9 in the PGA Championship, 4th in the U.S Open, and T33 in his defence of the Open Championship, how can that guy be playing like so much of a busted arse today in the only tournaments people watch him in, that being the majors?
And from those complex questions has emerged one simple answer: Smith’s game is stuffed and it’s LIV that’s stuffed it.
For our man John Huggan, whose mighty column can be found in the August issue of our crackerjack journal, on shelves Thursday, subscribe now and/or give the gift of Christmas, Smith’s switch to LIV was “a dubious choice to make at [his] time of life and career, even if the short-term ‘benefit’ was obvious - a large amount of Saudi cash.”
“But the suspicion (or the fear) was that such a switch would have a detrimental effect on Smith’s level of performance, either immediately or more gradually. Whatever, to give up the possibility of immortality was disappointing to those who value such things over cash in the bank. History books, after all, tend to be way more impressed by glittering trophies than filthy lucre,” according to Huggan.
Now, I rate J.Huggan. He is a ripper. He holds authority to account like those thieves from northern England torturing old people in a stately home in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. But, sorry, what? Smith’s “given up” the possibility of immortality? Does Huggan believe Smith can’t win another major championship? That he’s cooked forever because he’s been paid a motherlode to play 54-hole cut-free events 14 times a year?
As someone who believes Tiger Woods can not only come back and be competitive in PGA Tour events but also win a major in his 50s, as Phil Mickelson did and as Tom Watson nearly did, allow me to retort.
Smith is 31 years old. He’s been a professional golfer for 12 years. This year and last year, one could argue, are the only years he’s played poorly. And this year’s only half done. And it's not like he's turned into the drunk club chopper. As they say, never write off the champion golfers of the year.
Another argument that’s readily accepted into Group Think is that playing at Valderrama a week before the Open Championship is a dud preparation for a long weekend at the Dunluce Links championship course at Royal Portrush.
But here’s a thing: there is no one answer for any one golfer. And it was so windy in Spain they had to suspend play. Wind is a factor in links golf, a trope older than the gravestone of Old Tom Morris. And Smith’s 69, 73, 69 saw him run T7, six shots behind Talor Gooch (-8), to record his second-best result this year behind T5 in Mexico in April.
Smith’s long-time coach and friend, Grant Field, reckons that the notion that playing mainly 54-hole tournaments is an impediment to competing in 72-hole tournaments, including majors, is "a myth”.
“These guys have grown up their whole lives playing 72 holes,” Field says. “They play plenty of practice rounds. And I can tell you, the LIV guys, they're all working just as hard as they've ever worked … I just don’t buy into that narrative. They're professional enough. It's just hard to win a major.”
Hard to win a LIV event, too, according to Field (and, yes, he would say as much, but it’s clear he means it).
“People don’t realise how hard winning on the LIV tour is. Without a cut it doesn't separate the field. And, every week, you're up against Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia, Joaquin Niemann, Cam Smith. There’s a high concentration of very good players. To finish top-10 in LIV you have to play some really good golf,” Field says.
For mine, you can’t assert that world-class golfers on the LIV aren’t properly prepared for major golf tournaments when they have done as well as anyone on any tour in them, relative to their number.
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Bryson DeChambeau contended in three of four majors in 2023 and won the U.S Open. When Scottie Scheffler was powering towards a commanding victory at Quail Hollow this year, it was DeChambeau and Jon Rahm nipping at his heels. Yes, they fell away. So did everyone else, including all those who – the Accepted Group Think would have it – had given themselves the best shot of major glory by grinding away on weekly PGA Tour events distinguishable only by the global hedge fund with its name on the trophy.
This year Tyrell Hatton was T4 in the U.S Open won by JJ Spaun. Rahm was T7, Brooks Koepka was T12.
At this year’s Masters, Patrick Reed finished two shots from Rory McIlroy after 72 holes. DeChambeau was another two back.
At this year’s U.S Open, gnarly old Oakmont chewed up and spat out LIV players Smith, Dechambeau, Johnson and Mickelson with equal relish as it did with PGA Tour players Ludvig Aberg, Wyndham Clark, Patrick Cantlay, Tommy Fleetwood, Akshay Bhatia, Sepp Straka, Shane Lowry and Min Woo Lee.
Adam Scott – ever lauded for timing his season to peak at majors, and also because he’s a lovely man with a super-sexy golf swing - has played 96 consecutive major championships, every single one with a preparation that included 72-hole tournaments. At this year's U.S Open he had 54 tremendous holes and a bludger in the last 18, flaming out with 79.
And that’s no more proof that Scott would thrive on the LIV circuit than it is that Smith is playing dud golf because of it.
How much of their game is honed by practicing and how much from playing in competitive outlets is up to them.
Maybe the lack of a weekly grind is not working for Smith. But we don’t know that. Don’t know he wouldn’t have missed three cuts in 2025 majors had he stayed in establishment tours.
We would’ve just found something else to blame.
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