Ahead of his home LIV Golf event in Adelaide, Cam Smith sits down with TG‘s Ben Parsons to discuss his slump in form and his thoughts on the PGA Tour’s offer to return…
It was not that long ago Cam Smith possessed two of the five most important trophies in the game.
The Aussie first recognised on tour for his wispy mullet and moustache combo emerged as a world-beater in 2022 with wins at The Players at TPC Sawgrass and The Open at St Andrews.
When he soon jumped ship for LIV Golf, Smith was ranked the second best player in the world.
Golf, of course, is a fickle pursuit. Nobody at that stage could have been absolutely sure whether Smith was on an unstoppable path towards multiple major victories. Or, indeed, if he was riding a wave with a smelting-hot putter that would have given 2015 Jordan Spieth a run for his money.
Nonetheless, it has been jarring to see a player of Smith’s natural flair and devastating short game endure such a steep decline in recent times. Away from LIV events, he inexplicably missed seven cuts in a row in 2025 and was the only man to compete in all four majors without making a single weekend.
“I’ve had a little bit of time to think about it,” Smith tells TG, reflecting on last year’s lows. “I think you can look at it a couple of ways. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I didn’t play that bad.
“I get out on the range and hit all the shots and do everything right. I feel like I’m preparing right. It was just a shitty result year. I don’t really know how else to put it. It was frustrating, it was annoying, it was like you started to question, like, ‘Am I actually doing the right thing?’”
Smith got the reassurance he craved in December’s Australian Open. While he three-putted for bogey on his 72nd hole to fall one short of the brilliant Rasmus Neergard-Petersen, the 32-year-old Queenslander ended a desperate year in contention with rousing home support at Royal Melbourne.
“That is what I needed, a bit of a morale boost,” he admits. “It felt like I’d been doing all the right things and not much was happening in the sense of results. There was lots of good stuff, there was just a bit too much of the bad stuff. And I think that just comes through just trying to change a few things with the swing and not feeling confident with it. It was good to have a decent one there at the end of the year and finish the year off on a high note.”
Priorities off the course changed when Smith welcomed his first child with wife Shanel last spring. He has relished more time away from the game with his young family back home in Australia. But Smith is now without a win anywhere since LIV visited Donald Trump’s Bedminster resort in August ’23. He is 114th in the Data Golf ranking system.
“2022 was a great year and I would love to have another year like that,” he admits. “But it’s so hard to replicate. I feel like even if I play my best golf for the rest of my life in every tournament, I may not ever do that ever again. I might, but that was just a crazy year and I want to get back to that.”
Smith, however, quickly rejects the suspicion among observers that these drastic changes in his life, including a LIV contract rumored to be worth $100 million, have drained his motivation.
“It’s frustrating because I don’t think if I was playing anywhere else, the results would have really changed,” he insists. “I just had a rough year there and it sucked. Particularly a couple of those events, ones I really feel like I should perform at and I didn’t.
“I think people see average play aligned with changing a tour or not working hard enough. It really couldn’t be more the opposite. It’s just golf. You take those four events out, I don’t think the season was too bad. It’s hard out here, it’s hard everywhere. There’s good players everywhere. It was just a crappy four weeks.”
Smith is adamant he has not softened as a competitive force and and was certainly not tempted by a dramatic return to the PGA Tour this year in a bid to rediscover those surreal highs of ’22.
The circuit hastily arranged a Returning Members Program last month, which brought back Brook Koepka but also offered olive branches to Smith and fellow LIV stars Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm. Smith was driving across Florida from his Jacksonville home to a LIV season preview event in West Palm Beach when his agent called to tell him about the development. Of the three players who turned down the PGA Tour’s contrived program, Smith was the most emphatic with his rejection.
“It was a little bit surprising,” he says. “I definitely didn’t think that that was going to be the case. For years since we’ve been out here, it has felt like we would never go back and I was comfortable with that. It was a very weird scenario and one I wasn’t expecting. I still don’t really know what to think about it to be honest, in the grand scheme of things.
“Brooks is a good friend and if he thinks he’s going to be happier and have a better life out there, I 100 percent back his decision. I made the decision for that reason coming out here.”
Smith believes he has weathered the worst of the public storm that came when he accepted a substantial offer from Greg Norman in the aftermath of his famous win at the Old Course.
“It seems like it’s settled a lot,” he says. “But when I first came out here, there were some pretty strong headwinds. You definitely thought about stuff, but I’d like to think I’m a man of my word. What I set out to do, we’re currently doing with the [Ripper GC] team and Golf Australia, so I couldn’t be happier.”
Indeed, Smith is still buoyed by his last start Down Under and returns to his homeland this week to resume his role in arguably LIV’s biggest success story. The league’s tournament in Adelaide has become one of the best attended in Australian sport, with more than 100,000 arriving through the gates at The Grange last year. LIV has capitalized on a market which has long been starved of the biggest names in men’s golf.
“I thought it was going to be big, but I was blown away at the support,” Smith says of the league’s first visit to Adelaide in 2023. “The Aussies were right behind us and wanted us to do well.
“It was something that we really hadn’t seen as a league until that point, and that was the first time where I was like, ‘This is epic.’ The membership rates in Australia are through the roof. The junior membership rates are through the roof. I feel like we’ve been a real part of that, so it’s been awesome.
“Golf Australia has been a really big part of my journey as a golfer, and they couldn’t be more supportive of what we’re doing and helping out where they can. It’s been so good.”
This time around, Smith will return with a new star on his Ripper GC team. Elvis Smylie won LIV’s season-opener under the lights in Riyadh last week and will enjoy a very different kind of homecoming. Smith is convinced Smylie has the potential not only to be Australian golf’s next superstar, but the world No.1.
Still, there would be no popular winner among the frenzied crowds in Adelaide than their mulleted major champion.
“I want that winning feeling,” Smith says. “I love winning. It has been hard, but that’s why I work so hard, because I want to get back there.”