Lucas Herbert blows Cam Smith away to win NSW Open

Lucas Herbert wins the NSW Open and says his Bendigo mates may not make it to work on Monday.

2024 NSW Open champion Lucas Herbert at Murray Downs. Picture: Golf NSW

A white butterfly hovers above the first tee at Murray Downs Golf and Country Club. Lucas Herbert thwomps his opening drive and strides down an exuberant green fairway. The butterfly swoops left to follow him. Five hours later, when Herbert knocks in his winning putts at the NSW Open, the butterfly does celebratory loop-the-loops on the raging wind. I kid you not.

Okay, it may have been a different butterfly. But it’s been a magical few days off the beaten track, where Herbert has beaten the illustrious Cam Smith by three strokes for his first win in yonks, and it’s tempting on days like this, in towns like this, in a nation like ours, to succumb to bush romanticism. I reckon the Bendigo-born Herbert enjoys outback Australia more than the urban CBD. He’s been in such jolly spirits I’ve half expected him to pitch a swag and sleep on the river bank.

It hasn’t quite come to that but Herbert has clearly relished the return to his roots, the laid-back rural atmosphere, the old-school course, the red dirt in the bunkers coloured like Uluru, his hometown mates in the gallery, the bleating sheep, the yawning cows, the uppity rabbits, the wildly variable weather, the flagsticks resembling broomsticks, the kookaburras in the trees and the galahs in the crowd, drinking their tins of ale under bucket hats, swatting away flies and ditching the bathrooms in favour of the trees a couple of fairways away.

Lucash Herbert mastered the windy conditions on Sunday to claim the NSW Open at Murray Downs. Picture: Golf NSW

Herbert had trailed Smith by a whopping four strokes before the final round. Consider others. Yet the venerable British Open champion has produced a bludger of a closing three-over-par 74 for Herbert, scribbling his signature on a 67, to win his maiden professional event in Australia with a total of 15-under. It’s his first solo triumph anywhere on the planet since the ISPS Handa Championships in Japan in April 2023, and provides a mountain of momentum for the big lug ahead of the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland this week.

“I always knew I wanted to win something in Australia,” Herbert says. “I’d love to win an Aussie Open or an Aussie PGA but to win something like this, so close to home, is very, very special. And we’ll celebrate it tonight like it’s very, very special.

“There was a very good contingent of Bendigo crew here this week, and I know it’s a NSW Open, but it feels like a home event. For a lot of guys from Bendigo it will be the closest thing I’ll play to them this year. Very, very special to win in front of all my friends, some family as well, beating Cam after starting four shots back on Sunday. Very cool to tick that one off the list. Like I say, got a few friends here and hopefully their places of employment are very forgiving tomorrow.”

In other words, any boss in Bendigo who sacks any of Herbert’s mates for not turning up to work on Monday is a bum. I suspect there’s a corner of the Forest Hotel with all their names on it.

“The TAB odds wouldn’t have looked good,” Herbert says of his four-shot deficit at the start of the championship round. “The way my TAB form has been this week, I probably would have backed myself at those odds. It wasn’t like there was no chance but the odds were obviously in Cam’s favour. Walking to the first tee it was like, two or three under is going to be a great score.

“Hitting shots on the range, they were getting smashed sideways by the wind. You just had to take your chances when you got one close and then scramble for pars. A couple of times I let my mind slip and I was thinking, ‘Jeez, I’ve never won a tour event in Australia or something of this stature’.”

Lucas Herbert started the final round four shots behind Cam Smith. Picture: Golf NSW

Herbert has set the pace from the penultimate group. Running wild and free and thwomping monster drives without the stress of having Smith as a partner.

“Maybe relieved a bit of pressure on me but, in the same breath, I would have loved to have won in the same group as him,” Herbert says. “I would have loved to have gone head-to-head with him, right there next to him, and beaten him, but you can’t pick and choose. You’ve got to take what you’ve got and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got right now.

“It shows my game is on the right track. There’s some confidence there. The next two weeks (at the Australian PGA and Australian Open) there’s going to be stronger fields, tougher golf courses and I’m going to have to be sharper with the game. But I’m definitely on the right track if I’m producing the result I have this week.”

Conditions on Saturday were so hot you nearly carked it. So windy on Sunday a dog has flown from its chain and landed on the far side of the Murray River. Herbert has backed away four times, repeat four times, while addressing a crucial, nerve-jangling, knee-knocking putt complicated by ferocious winds while he held a slender one-stroke lead on the 16th green. He’s two-putted with the touch of a butterflies in the moment that has won the Open.

“I felt like a dickhead,” Herbert blushes of his four false starts. “Because on TV I’d look like a massive prima donna. The wind was just whipping through the gap at the back of the green and the peak of the gusts, every time, hit me half-a-second before I was about to pull the trigger.

“I felt like an idiot but I just had to keep backing away because I could have missed that thing seven-feet left. It was the most exposed part of the green, so slippery and so shiny across the top, the ball was almost on a crown, and if I hit to the right to allow for the wind, it could potentially keep going right … it was just a much harder putt than you could ever expect in those circumstances. But I hit a great putt.”

Corey Lamb and Cameron Smith during the final round of the NSW Open at Murray Downs.

Smith has a couple of hundred million dollars in the bank but he cannot buy a putt. He’s out of sorts throughout the final day, knocking his irons a mile from the pin and failing to weave his usual magic with the flat stick.

“I had about 85 putts,” he says. “I feel like I did everything I needed to do, I just couldn’t hole anything. That was basically it. There were a few gusts and I didn’t even feel like I was hitting bad putts, to be honest. It was pretty comical at the end there. It is what it is. It was just brutal. I feel like I did everything I could. It just wasn’t my day.”

Herbert’s slightly madcap chopping and changing of equipment has eventually produced the desired result. He played the first two days with a certain putter. He ditched it for round three and tried another. Reverted to the original for Sunday, bloody windy Sunday. All’s well that ends well. The butterfly effect.

“I was struggling with my putter all week and really didn’t feel comfortable in the first two rounds,” he says. “We went to the putting green after the round on Friday and knew we were going to switch putters for the next day. It looked like I was holding a rattlesnake out there for a while.

“I came off the course on Saturday, grabbed the other putter. I reckon I hit two putts and was like yep, this is going back in the bag tomorrow. And it just felt incredibly better. Every putt started on the line I wanted it to. I had a few really testing putts, left-to-righters, little smelly ones that I’d really struggled with, and knocked them right in the middle. There was some method to my madness but I took a sidetrack to get there.”