There is a statistic about Cameron Smith that is painful to look at. It’s like having a spotlight pointed straight at your eyes and having to look away. It’s uncomfortable, unpleasant and it concerns the Majors. It turns out the Australian, winner of the Open Championship en 2022, has missed the cut in his last five appearances in the majors. It’s not one, or two, or three, it’s five, the four in 2025 and the Open Championship in 2026. It’s more than a bad run, we’re talking a full-blown black hole
That air of a carefree, smiling, even naive lad can misleadingly make you think Smith doesn’t care, that it doesn’t keep him awake, but that’s not the case. The Masters de Augusta is just around the corner, only three weeks away, and he has it circled in red. He doesn’t want a sixth bad one and hopes the sixth time will be the charm. To that end he is waging a personal fight that has less to do with swing or technique and more with his head
“I feel good. I just need not to get in my own way. I feel like right now I’m too much in my own head, something I’ve been working on. But my game is great. I go to the range, I go to the chipping green, I go to the putting green and the feeling is: ¿qué hago aquí?, what I want is to go out and play, hit different shots and, as I said, just get out of my own way a bit”, he explains.
Cameron Smith has never been a player with overwhelming ease of speech, nor someone particularly deep when explaining his feelings. He’s more of a don’t-think-too-much-and-execute type. That’s how he’s had most success in his career. However, it seems that, indeed, for some time now he’s been thinking more than executing. It’s as if golf has stopped being a game for him.
The good thing is he hasn’t lost his hunger, at least that’s what he says publicly. He wants to break that run in the Majors as soon as possible and not just to make the cut, but to win again. “I want to win another one more than anyone. That’s what we work for. It’s an immensely rewarding moment in your life and something you can’t take for granted. Yes, I want to be up there lifting another trophy. A couple of years have passed for me, even here. But, as I’ve said, I feel my game is in a really good place. I’m starting to feel very confident and very comfortable with different shots and I just need to loosen up a bit. I feel I’m arriving very well into the majors season”, he assures.
Cameron Smith needs to cut the dynamic his career has fallen into. Right now you can say with confidence that he is in full decline. It all started with his victory at the Open Championship, the zenith of his career. After that he joined LIV Golf and since then things have gone downhill with no brakes. It hasn’t been a tumble off a cliff, more a steady, sustained fall.
He finished 2022 winning at home on the DP World Tour and his 2023 was not bad. He won twice on LIV Golf and added two top 10s at the PGA Championship and the US Open. That said, his results were gradually getting worse. In 2024 he didn’t secure any wins, but he still finished second three times on LIV, at least he was in contention. In the Majors he still finished sixth at the Masters, his best result of the year, although he ended up missing the cut at the Open.
The worst came in 2025. The decline continued. He missed the cut in all four Majors and his best result on LIV Golf was a fifth place. On the DP World Tour he did produce a notable highlight with his runner-up finish at the Australian Open, battling for the win with Rasmus Neergaard Petersen. But that was it. Very little for a player who reached world No. 2 and who in 2022 won THE PLAYERS and the Open.
Smith wants to snap the poor run now, preferably at the Masters. For that he is working. This year he hasn’t started badly on LIV, but it’s far from what is expected of him. He has finished eighth twice and also has a 13th and a 48th. It’s not a disaster, but it looks like scant return.
Seeing what he is capable of doing in Augusta will undoubtedly be one of the attractions that week. Obviously expectations around him will rise or fall depending on what he does this week at the LIV Golf in South Africa, the final tournament he plays before the Masters. In this regard, curiously, Smith now warns of what Cameron Young can do after his victory at THE PLAYERS. “I was so happy for Cam. I know he’s had several near misses over the years. He’s a great guy. And that’s a great course to win on. It’s pretty brutal. He’ll be another one to follow very closely during the majors season”.
