Cam Smith, Lucas Herbert give the people what they want at NSW Open

Cam Smith shot the lights out at the NSW Open — then revealed the story behind one of the low points of his career.

Cameron Smith during the opening round of the NSW Open. Picture: NSW Golf

Sheep are interminably noisy in the neighbouring paddock. Stop your bleating! They won’t co-operate. Kangaroo poop is in the light rough. More flies than Douglas Jardine encountered at the SCG. Ants are crawling over Cam Smith’s divot marks. They’re not playing for sheep stations at the NSW Open and yet they could be. There’s one just down the dirt road.

I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed watching a round of golf more than this. Smith and his mate Lucas Herbert shooting the lights out on the opening day at the Murray Downs Golf and Country Club. What a great name for a tremendous course, bringing to mind Sandy Lyle’s response when asked what he thought of a young Tiger Woods. “Never played there,” he deadpanned. Murray Downs? If you love your golf, you want to play here. He’s a good country bloke of a club.

“Give the people what they want,” sang The Kinks, and that’s what Smith and his LIV Golf stablemate Lucas Herbert did expertly on Thursday. It’s one thing to have a couple of Australian stars on the time sheet. You need them leaping up the leaderboard to really make it worthwhile.

Lucas Herbert plays his way out of trouble. Picture: NSW Golf

Smith was teary-eyed and devastated when he missed the cut and failed to live up to his billing at the Australian PGA Championship last year. He could have done a WG Grace and kept playing – “people came to watch me bat, not you umpire” – but he revealed after his course record of seven-under-par 64 that he got his just desserts.

“I was just being lazy and that was the result,” Smith said. “Being lazy is all your fault. You can’t really pin it on anyone else. There was no real swing things going on, everything felt fine, it was just about not really being competitive and not putting in the yards. I really got what I deserved, to be honest. In the grand scheme of things, it was probably a good thing because that hasn’t been the case this year.”

Which came as a surprise. The impression at his sorrowful PGA, which he will contest again next week at Royal Queensland, was that he tried too hard. Not the case. “I’d just had a few months off,” he said. “I hadn’t played much and I had a lot of personal stuff going on. I got back home and decided to hang out with mates and hang out with family rather than play some golf and hit the range and work on my game. So yeah, I got what I deserved.”

Smith arrived at Murray Downs – ever heard of him? – on Monday and practised with great intent before his sizzling start. On the sixth hole, he had the finest margin for error from the light rough. Only a pitching wedge in his fingertips and 20cm to work with due to the intrusion of a tree branch. He feathered it perfectly. Local plumbers, schoolkids, publicans, nannas and pops swooned. Smith shouted his instructions to the ball. Sit! Sit! Sit! It sat.

He claimed course records were few and far between. “I don’t even have the course record at Wantima,” he said of the Brisbane course where he learned to play. “Not even at Royal Queensland. The only one I can think of is Liberty National.”

There were ducks on ponds on Thursday. The chatterbox sheep. Quiet, please! Birdies up in the trees. Even more on the course. Mischievous boys screeching hey Cam, can we have a ball? No gallery ropes. Heaven for the patrons. More than a thousand spectators just walked straight up the fairway with Smith and Herbert, who posted an equally meritorious six-under 65. Flies were in abundance but few seemed to bother the overnight leader. No flies on Smith.

When he was pacing out a chip to the ninth green, a local bloke started flapping his gums to the British Open champion’s caddie. How’s your accommodation? Enjoying the town, mate? They don’t mind a chat around here. “It’s definitely a different environment out there,” Smith grinned. “Most weeks we’re in inner-cities, we’re staying in the city and there’s lots of people around. This is very different but it’s a breath of fresh air being here. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, kind of travel around Australia. I haven’t been down here before and there’s just lots of things I love about this week. I really enjoyed the golf course. I guess you’d call it an old-school design.”

Herbert achieved much after expecting little. “I didn’t really start practising properly until Sunday,” he said. “That’s only four or five days ago so I couldn’t really come out here and expect to do too much. It definitely exceeded my expectations … it was a great atmosphere … it’s pretty hard not to root for Cam if you’re an Aussie and being somewhat of a local boy, I had some good support as well. There was a good energy out there. If I can hang around Cam’s score most events, I’m probably going to be doing pretty well.”

Smith and Herbert won $US2m each in September when their Ripper GC won the LIV team championship. “It definitely felt like we kept each other honest out there today,” Herbert said. “We probably pushed each other to keep going. I feel like all year a bit of my role within Ripper has been to keep pushing Cam. He’s in the peak of his career pretty much, he’s got major championships he wants to play well in. I’ve tried to keep him honest in short-game drills, money games or tournament rounds. It felt like another regular day on the job out there today.”

On his early tee time of 7.10am, Herbert laughed: “It should be a quiet afternoon. I’d say there will be a nap in there somewhere given the alarm went off before five this morning. I thought I’d left those days behind me when I went to LIV, but here we are again. A little nanna nap on the couch this afternoon for me.”

Smith and Herbert going head-to-head, shot-for-shot and putt-for-putt for the NSW Open on Sunday would put Murray Downs on the golfing map. He really is a top bloke. Herbert grew up at nearby Bendigo but the personable, down-to-earth, good-natured Smith dominates support in Australia. Maybe that’s what the sheep were bleating. Cam! Cam! Cam! “Obviously, Lucas is a bit of a local boy and a bit of a fan favourite out here so it’d be nice to knock him off if I can,” he said. “But there’s still a long way to go.”