WORLD CUP OF GOLF: BELGIAN DUO HOLDS OUT FAST-FINISHING AUSSIES

IT was the best foursomes result Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith had ever had.

Not just at the World Cup, but best ever as they came home at Metropolitan with a fighting 65, playing alternate shots that no one, not even winners Belgium, could better.

The Aussie duo said they had never played in front of home a crowd like it, as the masses rose again and again for birdies that put them within reach of a miracle win.

Leishman said he felt it most when Smith holed out from the bunker for a birdie on the 14th hole.

The Queenslander had to put it in, because Leishman left his own bunker shot in the sand the shot before.

It was the Aussie team’s seventh birdie for the round, and third in a row. They needed every one though, having started the final day six shots back.

There weren’t enough leaderboards for Leishman to know exactly where they were placed but, with seven birdies in the can, they had to be close.

It wasn’t until the 16th that the scale of their challenge was laid out. Leishman saw they were still three behind, so he smashed his drive to 50m short of the green.

Smith then flipped a wedge to three feet, knowing a birdie was a must.

But, in a rare lowlight for an otherwise stunning final-day fightback, Leishman missed the birdie putt, one later he said he would “like to have back”.

It was a cruel blow because Belgium made bogey on 15 at the same time. The gap could have been one.

But it was three, which was where it remained.

The Aussies went without a birdie on the final four holes and the near-perfect Belgians rattled home a three on the 18th to collect, figuratively if not literally, the biggest trophy in world golf.