Cameron Smith tries to become first player in 15 years to defend Open title

There have been more back-to-back winners of The Open than any other major, but that doesn’t make Cameron Smith’s task any easier.

Russell Gould

@gouldynews

3 min read

July 20, 2023 - 8:33AM

NCA NewsWire

It won’t be easy for Cameron Smith to defend his Open crown. Picture: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Golf

Don't miss out on the headlines from Golf. Followed categories will be added to My News.

The task facing Cameron Smith, of not just going back-to-back at The Open but winning a second major, isn’t lost on is peers including Masters champ Jon Rahm, who said the lessons learnt winning one should help the quest for two.

No one since Padraig Harrington in 2007-08, and Tiger Woods the two years before him, has won the title two years in a row. But it’s a feat that has been achieved eight times in the past century by some of the game’s greats, including Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson.

Australian legend Peter Thomson won three of his five Opens in a row, his third in that run coming at Royal Liverpool, where Smith will defend his crown, in 1956.

Rahm became a two-time major winner when he won the Masters in April after his US Open breakthrough in 2021.

The Spaniard knows the battle facing Smith to move on from the long list of single major champions when the Australian tees off on Thursday night against the best players in the world.

“It‘s incredibly difficult to do,” Rahm said.

“And I can understand how when you get on a roll like that and win one, next time you’re in position you win another, well, it’s only fair to believe that the next one you’re going to be ready to handle the moment as well.”

Cameron Smith is trying to defend his British Open title. Picture: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

Smith, one of 10 Australians in the field at The Open this week, has often made the point he doesn’t put expectation on himself when he gets to any golf tournament. That’s his process.

But multiple major champs are rare among Australia’s long line of golfing greats, with Thomson, Greg Norman and Karrie Webb on that list, while Adam Scott, Jason Day and Geoff Ogilvy are among Smith’s contemporaries who have won just one.

So while he doesn’t want to think about it, Smith knows the opportunity, with how well he’s playing, is there.

“I don‘t expect that of myself, but there’s definitely something on the inside of me that wants to win two, three, four, however many I can,” he said.

“I try not to let that get in the way, though, for sure.

Smith with Brooks Koepka, who has won five majors. Picture: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

“It was such a good year last year, you almost expect to win. I think that’s not really a good way to look at golf. Just expect to do all the things that you’re meant to do 100 per cent and then go out there and give it a crack, and if you win, you win.”

Last year Smith held off Rory McIlroy, a four-time major champion who won his Open crown the last time it was at Royal Liverpool in 2014.

But that was also the most recent of his major wins, nine years ago, not that McIlroy, who tuned up with a win at last week’s Scottish Open, is feeling the pinch of that major drought.

“Since 2014, I’ve won everything else there is to win in the game, apart from a major championship, so I know I’m good,” he said.

Irishman Shane Lowry celebrated for months after his Open win in 2019, his sole major victory, and he made the case for just how difficult adding more trophies is, even in a golf landscape broken open by the arrival of LIV, where Smith plays.

“You only get four chances a year, and the top of world golf is so strong at the moment,” Lowry said.

“Like I keep saying, you don‘t have a God-given right to go out there and win and do well. It’s a battle day in and day out for professional golfers, and that’s what it is.”