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

More than two years without a win, Cameron Smith goes into the Australian Open this week at Royal Melbourne with another streak he is trying to end.He has yet to make a 36-hole cut in the seven tournaments he has played this year outside of the LIV Golf League, including the four majors.

More than two years without a win, Cameron Smith goes into the Australian Open this week at Royal Melbourne with another streak he is trying to end.

He has yet to make a 36-hole cut in the seven tournaments he has played this year outside of the LIV Golf League, including the four majors. Smith also missed the cut at the Dunhill Links Championship, the Saudi International and the Australian PGA Championship last week.

"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.

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.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)