Wayne Riley
It’s been a good start to the year on the PGA Tour, with both events in Hawaii producing some spectacular golf, beautiful settings and notable winners. At the Sentry Tournament of Champions, Cameron Smith shot the lowest 72-hole score in PGA Tour history (34-under-par) to hold off Jon Rahm and claim his fourth PGA Tour title.
It could be a really significant year for Smith. He’s one of the best putters you’ll ever see and he does everything right – he hits it in the fairway, he’s a wonderful iron player and he scrambles well, which isn’t a bad combination when you consider how good he is with the flat-stick! He also gets it out there a decent way off the tee despite not being the biggest guy.
It’s taken him a while to get going on the PGA Tour – he finished 4th at the US Open back in 2015 to get his card for the first time – but he’s now won four times on the PGA Tour (plus two Australian PGAS) and broken into the world’s top ten. He’s already reached another level, and yet you feel there’s more to come.
Holding off the best player in the world to win a tournament with a world-class field will do wonders for his confidence. He’s already a fairly relaxed character with a good work ethic and sense of humour and he’s also very content in his private life at the moment. He’s a good kid who’s comfortable in his own skin and I think we’ll see more from him this year.
The obvious next goal when you breach the world’s top ten is success in a Major Championship, and I suspect he’ll compete for another one this year. He has three top-tens at The Masters to his name – including fifth in 2018 and second in 2020 – so he clearly has an affinity for Augusta National, and he has the game and temperament to contend in the other three. When you’re as good as he is with the putter, you can win any week.
Someone who isn’t renowned for being great with the flat-stick is Hideki Matsuyama, but he led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting for the first time the following week at the Sony Open. His play-off victory over Russell Henley was his third in the last nine months and he’s now fully back to his best after an indifferent spell. He’s always been one of the game’s best ballstrikers – his exhibition at The Masters last April was something else – so if he can add aboveaverage putting to his armoury, that’s going to be very ominous for his peers.
You’d expect someone who’s won three times in nine months – including a Major – to be inside the world’s top five, but he’s only managed to sneak back into the top ten. This just goes to highlight the astounding quality in the professional game at the moment – it quite simply has never been better.
If you look at the Official World Golf Ranking, it’s crazy. Rory Mcilroy is back in form but he’s just about hanging on to the top ten, as is Bryson Dechambeau, who we haven’t seen much of so far in 2022. Brooks Koepka, who has won four Major Championships since 2016, is down in 18th spot. Jordan Spieth is 15th, Patrick Reed has fallen all the way to 26th, Tommy Fleetwood – who really needs to improve his putting – is now 41st and Shane Lowry, one of Europe’s few success stories at the Ryder Cup, is on the verge of falling out of the top 50. You need to play well to stand still these days and only exceptional golf will propel you up the rankings.
On a related note, congratulations to Seamus Power for breaking into the top 50 for the first time. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about him, but he’s now on the cusp of overtaking compatriot Lowry to become the highest-ranked Irish golfer. He’s gone about his business under the radar and I’m looking forward to seeing more of him as we progress through 2022. What a year we have in store!
“Only exceptional golf will propel you up the world rankings these days”