SMITH IN HERBERT’S TRAJECTORY
TENSIONS have eased between PGA Tour players and LIV rebels, including Aussie star Cam Smith.
But that doesn’t mean the British Open champ won’t have a target on his back when he returns home this summer for the Australian Open and PGA, Smith’s first trip home for three years.
Smith is the headline act as the two biggest tournaments on the Australian calendar return after Covid-enforced breaks, with the Open to be played for the first time since 2019.
The best Australian players are all locked in to a field that will boast three major champions and a sterling crop of rising stars, including Lucas Herbert, a PGA Tour winner and twotime DP World Tour winner now firmly ensconced among the world’s best.
Having taken his career on an upward trajectory since the last Australian Open, which included breaking into the world’s top 50, a maiden visit to the Masters and two top-15 major finishes in 2022, Herbert will come home not just hopeful of taking down world No.3 Smith but looking forward to it. “He’s your player of the year from Australia, no doubt, and I know that he loves coming home and playing those events. So I think everyone else in the field would be looking at Cam as that’s the guy they have to beat,” Herbert said from South Africa where he’s playing this week.
“But I also know that Leish (Marc Leishman), Scotty (Adam Scott) and myself are all sitting there knowing if we play well we can compete with Cam and definitely have a chance to beat him.
“I know Cam will be down there trying to win and he’s someone I’d love to go up against coming down the back nine on Sunday.”
While Herbert did have issues with converts to Greg Norman’s LIV Golf league protesting against their PGA Tour bans, he said there were no tensions with the likes of Smith or Leishman, who are among a handful of Aussies playing for Norman’s Saudibacked league. “To be honest, I think it was tense for maybe the first month,” Herbert said. “I think the tour players are now pretty much over it. All of us just want to turn up and play.”