Inside the moment Cameron Smith felt heartbreak on the 18th hole as Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen won the Australian Open
One heckle broke the silence at the 18th hole before the Australian Open’s deciding putts: ‘it breaks more than you think’. For Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, it was true of the green. For Cam Smith, his heart.
Golf tournaments are a funny beast because, unlike basically every other sporting event, the higher the stakes, the quieter the crowd.
Tennis might beg to differ, and that would be fair enough. But much like policing their own rules when they play, golf fans police each other to ensure not even a whisper spills out of the gallery.
On Sunday, tens of thousands of fans were eerily silent as Cameron Smith and Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen readied themselves for putts to potentially win a reborn Australian Open at Royal Melbourne. Lazarus never came back like this event.
Then, a lone voice bellows across the gallery, having watched for hours golfers putt across the terrain to a Sunday pin tucked in the far right corner of the green.
“It breaks more than you think.”
It’s uncertain if it was directed at Smith or Neergaard-Petersen. Given the Aussie twang, Neergaard-Petersen probably wasn’t listening.
“I heard it, but it didn’t really register,” Neergaard-Petersen later said of the shout from the stands.
At that stage, Smith and Neergaard-Petersen were tied on the last green and nothing had really separated them all day. They might have happily shaken on the result in the spirit of Princess Mary. You claim half, we claim half.
But if you were framing a betting market on the last after Neergaard-Petersen hacked out of greenside weeds for his third, leaving 15-foot for par, and Smith rolled his gargantuan birdie try across the green to five feet after a conservative approach, the Australian was a heavy favourite.
Neergaard-Petersen stepped up and allowed for the break, his ball curling in the side door of the cup, perhaps the luck he was owed from an eagle try on the previous hole when it almost oscillated on the edge. Begrudgingly, the crowd clapped. Then, cowered.
Who wants to watch Smith and a little tiddler to force a play-off?
Smith did what he’d done all week on the greens, slow, deliberate, stand over the ball, waggle the bum until you feel comfortable, eventually pull the trigger. It missed.
It was another Australian Open not won by an Australian, a streak stretching back to 2019 when Matt Jones claimed his second Stonehaven Cup. None have hurt the local fans as much as this.
“This is one of the events that is very big for him, so obviously I feel for him,” Neergaard-Petersen said. “He’s a class act.”
There’s no need to dwell on what has been a wreck of a year on the golf course for Smith, because you sense he would have endured it all if he could get his hands on a first Australian Open. He still found time to sign autographs for some kids afterwards, then strode into the evening. He’s had far worse wounds and far worse weeks and still spoke to the media. This time, he didn’t. That’s how much it hurt. Debate the merit of what LIV Golf has done to the games of some stars, but don’t argue stars like Smith don’t care.
Regardless, Smith has found his mojo again and there’s no golfing artist like him on the Melbourne sandbelt when he’s on song.
On Saturday, Lucas Herbert spoke of how much pressure the Australians put on themselves to win their own event, when Europeans, Americans, Asians all come here and treat it like any other overseas tournament. Maybe he’s right.
Out the back of the 18th green though, an Australian not named Cameron Smith was celebrating his first Australian Open win and few in the crowd would have known: Neergaard-Petersen’s caddie Brian Nilsson.
“We came down last year and he told me, ‘let’s go down to Australia and win your Australian Open’,” Nilsson told News Corp. “I thought, ‘that’s pretty cool’. It took us one more year.
“He played awesome all year and it’s unf------believable. This is hopefully of the start of the tournament getting back to where it needs to be.”
Nilsson has caddied for a host of Australian players throughout his career: John Senden, Peter O’Malley, Brett Rumford, Marcus Fraser et al. He loved watching Greg Norman carry the tournament for years.
Just before Neergaard-Petersen teed off in the final round on Sunday, Nilsson walked to the 18th green to watch Senden finish his tournament. It’s a remarkable achievement for the 54-year-old to even make the cut still. Senden had a putt like the one Smith had for birdie and Nilsson knew getting down in two would be a challenge.
“I knew we were half alive,” he said. “(Neergaard-Petersen’s) lie (for his chip) wasn’t great. We had enough green there and he just turned to me and said, ‘I think I can hole this’. It was a really tough shot.”
He didn’t hole it, but he did on the next, a putt he later said was somewhere between a “one in 60 to 100 chance”.
And the key to it all? He allowed for just the right amount of break.
Originally published as Inside the moment Cameron Smith felt heartbreak on the 18th hole as Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen won the Australian Open
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