Cameron Smith Turns Luck to Victory at Players

“I’ve heard horror stories from Tiger and Freddy and some guys about having to hit 5- or 6-iron into 17 on those cold north wind days, and I haven’t experienced that,” Justin Thomas said two days before The Players Championship began. “When you get wind and cold temperatures like that, it’s just a different animal, and it’s really just a survival-type thing.”

And it was.  The weather last week gave the tournament a new, brutal feel.  All those people who love to see golfers suffer got their wish.

As it turned out, the luck of the draw and the luck of the weather smiled on Australian Cameron Smith, who nobody,  except maybe Cameron Smith, picked to win before the tournament started.

The Players Championship, the most important, full-field PGA Tour event on the schedule, became a water-logged, near freezing experience for players, caddies, officials, tv and radio crews, media members, and hearty spectators. Ski hats, puffy coats, gloves, and multiple jackets were worn. Golfers probably felt like they were layered up like the Michelin man.

Mother Nature was the leader on Thursday and Friday. She hit the tournament with, in order, rain, thunderstorms, dangerous weather, darkness, unplayability, lightning, and night. That was just day one and two.

The first round of the Players Championship took 54 hours and 16 minutes.

The Weather Channel app was getting more hits than the PGA Tour leaderboard app.

There were no first-round or second-round leaders because the field stopped and started so often. Because no one really knew who was leading, no one felt the pressure of holding the lead or sleeping on it.  A leader wasn’t established until Monday morning when Anirban Lahiri finished at 9-under par and nobody bettered him.

Sebastian Munoz and Doug Ghim were at 8-under along with Paul Casey and Sam Burns.  Cameron Smith was two strokes back at 7-under, tied with Tom Hoge. Of the group, Smith and Casey had more experience winning professional events than the others near the top. What it meant was that the Players Championship was going to be a wild 18-hole finish with no favorite, no one as a lock for victory.

The experienced stars were too far back in the pack after the slaughter on Saturday and Sunday that it was unlikely they would emerge. The closest were Daniel Berger and Viktor Hovland, five strokes back of the leader. Then, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, and Sergio Garcia, a former winner, were six behind. Scottie Scheffler was seven behind; Dustin Johnson, 11 behind; McIlroy, 12 back.  Those five back had a chance if the leaders faltered.

Want your voice heard? Join the Pro Golf Now team!

Write for us!

Before the tournament started, Viktor Hovland, who is from Norway, was asked about the worst weather he’d experienced on the golf course.

“I remember maybe back in Norway I played this junior tour and it started snowing in the first or second round,” he said.

“I remember maybe back in Norway I played this junior tour and it started snowing in the first or second round,” Viktor Hovland said.

“I guess playing a couple of links tournaments as a junior, as well, when it starts blowing and raining sideways, that’s always interesting, but I don’t think it’s going to be that bad this week,” he said.

Think again Viktor! It was exactly that bad.

In fact, the wind and rain took many golfers out of contention and out of the tournament.

You recall the horror show that was Saturday. The weather that day actually determined who wouldn’t win more than who would.  Around noon, professional golfers started whacking balls into the ordinary terrible places they find at TPC Sawgrass instead of being stopped by squeegees and chased off the course by electricity and sideways rain.  Even then, serious winds created havoc. Flagsticks were bending. The 17th was a disaster in the making.

The most extreme example occurred immediately after the restart on Saturday when Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, and Brooks Koepka were stationed on the 17th tee. They were there because that’s where they were when play was halted.  All three of them hit their tee shots into the water.  Brooks Koepka could only laugh.  It was that ridiculous.

What was worse is that he had to play another full 18 holes that same day in similar conditions and he would have to play the hole again. And he wasn’t the only one.

Koepka said, “I hit 8. There’s nothing you can do. We hit a gust. I don’t think it was going harder for anybody else out here than when me, Scottie, and Xander played it.”

In the next threesome after Koepka’s, Collin Morikawa was first up, and he, too, found the lake around the 17th.

However, Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas followed him, and they were the first ones that afternoon to hit the putting surface and have the balls stay there. Now whether that says that they are better wind players or that they hit those shots more on the center of the club or that the wind just didn’t gust when they hit, we will never know. They may have just been lucky.

“It’s such a big target to hit the green,” McIlroy said. “Basically, it’s a big, massive dartboard, and you’re like, just hit it anywhere on there. I hit a pretty good 7-iron. It pitched 123.”  He said his 7-iron usually goes 185.

McIlroy said he’d been on the good side of the draw many times and on the bad side also. He believes it evens out over time.  Last week, he definitely got the bad side of it. He said it was not unfair, though because the course was so soft.

In Koepka’s second 18 of the day, he had an adventure in club selection on the 16th and 17th.

“It picked up again when we were on 16,” Koepka noted about the wind. “I hit 8-iron, flew 205 yards on 16. On 17 (the second time) hit it 105.”

That’s 100 yards of wind adjustment.

“If we were playing links golf, you could run everything up and keep it on the ground, just kind of chip, bunt, run everything, and you’d be all right,” he added.

Dustin Johnson said that when he came back to the course for the restart, he was on 17 green and just had to hit a putt.  He hit a 3-iron second shot on the 18th the first time he played it that day and 4-iron the second time. The last time he hit 3-iron to a green for a second shot was at Monterey CC.  He remembered because he doesn’t have second-shot 3-irons very often.

“Days like today, I don’t mind,” Johnson said. “They’re really tough, but I like the tough conditions. Like I said, I played really well. Three-putted 16 for double. Obviously, that was — played 16 and 2, but take those two holes away, even just take pars on them, it’s a really solid round.”

Sitting on his sofa at home was Cameron Smith, who knows the course well because he lives less than 10 miles away. While others were suffering, he was waiting for the second round to be concluded at the Players Championship so that he could get out for round three.

“I blew a few of the leaves around in the backyard for more leaves to come down in the backyard, but that was about it, to be honest,” he said.  “Not really much to do in those conditions.”

Ordinarily, in this kind of weather, he’d stay inside.

“I’d be on the couch having a coffee and watching the rain go by,” he added.

And so, when the leaders teed off, they had the advantage of not having to beat the Rory McIlroys and Dustin Johnsons of the world, although they did have to keep an eye on Daniel Berger and Justin Thomas.   That gave Cameron Smith, a very good putter as it turns out, the chance of a lifetime.

Cameron Smith had ten birdies in his final round on a course at the Players Championship that he said reminded him of those he used to play in Australia.

He dropped a 38-footer at the first, 9-footers at the second and third, and a ten-and-a-half-footer at the fourth. Then he made his only par on the front nine. To finish the front side, he made three bogeys in a row.

He righted the ship with more birdies on the next four holes by dropping a ten-footer at the 10th, a four-footer at the 11th, a 3-footer at the 12th, and a 12-footer at the 13th. When asked how he turned it around Cameron Smith said,

“Was able to hit a couple of nice drives off 10 and 11 and give myself some really good opportunities into the greens there. Yeah, it was just kind of knuckling down and kind of knowing what I had to do.”

Cameron Smith’s shot to remember was Rickie Fowler-like on the 17th where his ball landed just four and a half feet from the hole.

“I’d be lying if I said I was aimed to the right of it,” he admitted after the round was over. “I was just trying to hit it on the right edge of the bunker there and kind of hold it up against the wind.”

He had two real chances to lose it. The first was on the 16th when he hit a monster hook off the tee but chipped out from the trees and pine straw and ended up with a par.

The second was a bad drive and a worse second shot that ended up in the lake on the 18th.  However, he dropped, took his penalty shot, chipped up to three feet, and made the putt for bogey and the biggest victory of his life to date.

Now, thanks to wind and rain and lightning and some luck here and there, we have a new champion to watch: Aussie Cameron Smith who can putt lights out and fight his way through any kind of tough conditions.