Cam Smith at Australian Open trying to make first 36-hole cut of the year

“Golf doesn’t owe me anything,” Smith said Tuesday at Royal Melbourne. “I have to go out there and work and I think throughout the season it’s been a case of hit one or two bad shots here and there and it’s like, ‘Oh, here we go again’ type of thing.”

Last week was one of those moments. He opened with a 69 and then finished with a double bogey at Royal Queensland for a 75 to miss the cut by four shots. That led Smith to say last Friday, “I think it is in my head.”

He missed four of those seven cuts by three shots or more. It hasn't been much better elsewhere. On the 54-hole, no-cut LIV Golf League, Smith had only five top 10s in the 13 individual tournaments, with his best finish a tie for fifth in Mexico City.

"I do know what the answer is and that’s just to keep working hard and be patient,” Smith said in Brisbane. “I’ve tried to be patient, I’ve tried to do all the right stuff. It’s just, for whatever reason, not coming together on the golf course. I don’t think about golf often, but definitely in the last couple of months I have thought about it a lot. Yeah. I just want to get back to where I was.”

The world ranking is skewed because LIV does not get world ranking points. But the missed cuts have taken a toll. Smith ended last year at No. 79 in the world. He goes into his final tournament of the year at the Australian Open at No. 354.

Rory’s outlook on LIV

Rory McIlroy famously went from being the harshest critic of LIV Golf to supporting reunification. Now he sounds resigned that golf will have competing circuits, and he’s comfortable with being in the right place.

“I think for golf in general it would be better if there was unification,” McIlroy said on the CNBC CEO Council Forum last week. “But I just think with what’s happened over the last few years, it’s just going to be very difficult to be able to do that.”

There was movement for some form of unity in February when President Trump met with both sides.

That led McIlroy to say in February at Torrey Pines, “I think everyone has just got to get over it and we all have to say, ‘OK, this is the starting point and we move forward.’ We don’t look behind us, we don’t look to the past.”

He said on the CNBC forum that he still believes unification is in golf’s best interests. He just doesn’t see that happening.

“As someone who supports the traditional structure of men’s professional golf, we have to realize we were trying to deal with people that were acting, in some ways, irrationally, just in terms of the capital they were allocating and the money they were spending,” McIlroy said.

LIV begins its fifth year in 2026, adding Victor Perez and Laurie Canter to various teams. McIlroy said LIV has not seen a return on the investment and would need to spend another $5 or $6 billion just to stay in the game.

“I’m way more comfortable being on the PGA Tour side than on their side,” he said. “But who knows what’ll happen?”

Last chance at the British

The British Open on Tuesday released details for what it calls the “Last Chance Qualifier” to be held on the Monday of the championship.

The idea was to give players one last opportunity to get into the 156-man field next year, and to give fans competition to watch that Monday at Royal Birkdale.

The 12-man field will compete for one spot over 18 holes. The field will be drawn from the leading two players in the world ranking not already exempt; the British Amateur runner-up (if still an amateur); players who missed out in a playoff at Final Qualifying or finished one spot behind in Final Qualifying; players who tied at Open Qualifying Series but had the lower world ranking.

“Every golfer who tees it up at Royal Birkdale will have earned the right to do so and we look forward to seeing which player emerges from the field,” said Johnnie Cole-Hamilton, chief championships officer at the R&A.

Tough grade

Keegan Bradley won the Travelers Championship for the first time in his native New England. He had five other top 10s, reached No. 7 in the world and played well enough that he turned down a chance to become the first Ryder Cup playing captain since 1963.

What kind of grade would Bradley give himself for the year?

“Well, that’s a complicated question because I’m really proud of the way I’ve played,” Bradley said Tuesday in the Bahamas. “I think in a lot of ways it’s the best year of my career.

“But when you factor in losing the Ryder Cup, I mean, it’s an ‘F,’” he said. “You’ve got to go and win that and this grade is different. It’s really tough to grade. I was talking to my coach. He said, ‘Remember, you won this year.’ I was like, ‘No, I don’t remember that at all.’”

Bradley said ultimately he was proud of how he played with so much on his plate.

“But the end of the year was difficult,” he said.

Opportunity through crisis

PGA Tour Enterprises CEO Brian Rolapp wasn't bothered to be taking over a sport that had been fractured by the Saudi money that lured away top names to LIV Golf.

Rolapp took part in the CNBC CEO Council Forum last week in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

“The entire narrative around golf was that it's fractured. It's messy. There's some truth to that,” Rolapp said. "I look at that as opportunity. No sport — if you study history — has become strong without a good old fashioned crisis. The NFL had the AFL-NFL fight, they had labor issues.

“Golf had theirs. It was just a little late.”

Golf actually had won in the late 1960s when the tour players broke away from the PGA of America because they felt it did not have their best interests at heart. From that came the PGA Tour, and it has been thriving ever since.

“If you look at history, if you do things right, it's only opportunity after those crises,” Rolapp said.

Divots

The Australian Open, played this year at Royal Melbourne for the first time since 1991, will return to Kingston Heath in 2026. Rory McIlroy has signed a two-year deal to play the Australian Open in 2025 and 2026. ... Nelly Korda announced on Instagram the day after Thanksgiving that she is engaged. ... Former NCAA champion Fred Biondi earned his European tour card through Q-school last month. Now he's trying to get through the second stage and advance to the finals of the PGA Tour Q-school. ... Will Zalatoris is playing the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa, his first time playing since the PGA Championship in May because of back surgery.

Stat of the week

Former PGA champion Jimmy Walker and Nick Watney are among 16 former PGA Tour winners in the second stage of Q-school this week.

Final word

“I remember when I turned pro, and I looked at some of those guys who are my age now, and how old I thought they were. And that’s me." — Adam Scott, 44, who turned pro in June 2000.

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf