Richie McCaw and Guy Sebastian get in on Cam Smith’s quest for Australian Open redemption

Golf’s a silly, weird, crazy game, says Cam Smith.

Seventy-eight shots. Cam Smith stumbled away from Royal Queensland like they were tequilas. His eyes were watering, he was red in the face. Felt a bit crook in the guts. You were tempted to fetch the poor bloke a stomach pump.

Only golf can humiliate a champion like this. Smith’s back nine to win The Open Championship is up there with Shane Warne’s Gatting ball for sporting miraculousness on British turf. If you reckon Gat was shocked to lose his off stump to a swooping delivery that pitched outside leg before swerving left like a great white smelling human blood, you should have seen Rory McIlroy’s face when Smith nudged, winked and got up and down on the Road Hole at St Andrews. Smith pinched the Open like he was stealing from the rich to give to the poor – but then this same marvellous, honest, emotional, down-to-earth fellow misses the cut at last week’s Australian PGA Championship with a round so bad it put tears in his eyes.

Made his bottom lip tremble. Kicked him out of the tournament. Genuinely upset him. He talked so apologetically it seemed his very soul was hurting. It was a truly shocking collapse, but confirmation of one of sport and life’s incontestable truths: golf is the funniest of old games.

“A silly game, sometimes, to be honest,” Smith said on the eve of the Australian Open. “A couple of weeks ago I was competing to win the Hong Kong Open. I thought I was playing pretty decent golf. A couple of weeks later it’s at the other end of the spectrum. It’s pretty weird how it can change that quickly. It’s a crazy game. Just as you think you’ve got it, you don’t. And then sometimes when you think you don’t have it, you’re finishing in the top five or top ten. So, it’s a crazy game.”

A silly, weird, crazy game. Smith’s opening round at The Lakes on Thursday will be a compelling psychological study. Analyse this. An Open champion, one of golf’s true elite, attempting to save face and win a Stonehaven Cup to plonk on the mantelpiece with his Claret Jug. He was endearingly vulnerable and unashamedly wounded in Brisbane – he cares! The champ cares! – and his shot at redemption comes alongside Min Woo Lee and Japan’s Rikuya Hoshino from 7.05am.

“It was a very frustrating week,” Smith said of his Brisbane bogeyathon. “Obviously the game didn’t feel good. It was pretty upsetting to play like that at home. Not only in Australia, but my home town. I had lots of friends and family there that were hoping for another good week. It wasn’t to be. Lots of hard work over the weekend with my coach … we hit a lot of balls, worked on the right stuff and the game’s feeling pretty good this week. It’ll be an interesting one. I just need to go out there and trust and commit to what I’m doing.”

Silly, weird, crazy game. His self-belief isn’t shot to bits. But there’s a nick in it. “I guess it’s easy to lose confidence with rounds like that,” he said. “It’s easy to look at it as just another round but at the same time, it hurts the confidence a little bit. Just got to get back to what I know and what I can do. The old saying of ‘one swing can change a round’ … I’m looking forward to that. Growing up as a kid you want to win your national Open … you want it that little bit extra, which sometimes can be detrimental. I just need to go out there and commit to what I’m doing.”

Smith looked OK without being back to his outstanding, all-conquering best in Wednesday’s Pro-Am. Among his partners was ex-All Blacks skipper Richie McCaw. As a golfer, McCaw’s a heck of a rugby player. He speared shots right and left and onto a nearby road. A disgruntled Wallabies fan, of which there’s a few, might suggest he was never that willing to give a ball away in a Bledisloe Cup Test. No surprise that he attacked most greens from the side? When he kicked a ball out of the rough, as Pro-Am players all do, well, I think someone mentioned he was accustomed to flouting the laws of the game. All the sort of thing you say when an athlete’s been too good for you. McCaw was a good-natured hacker. When he holed a putt on the 10th green, Smith said, “Nice putt, mate. You’re team captain.” Asked later for his thoughts on McCaw’s swing, Smith replies: “I wouldn’t say good.”

Smith birdied the 12th … I wouldn’t say textbook. He tried to cut his drive. Hooked it so far it could have gone for six at the SCG. Missed the fairway by about a hundred metres. Rolled in front of the 10th green. Not to make a song and dance of it, but the ball rolled to the feet of a dapper bloke in a large white Air Jordan cap. Guy Sebastian. Those battle scars, they didn’t look like they were fading for Smith, but he slogged a short iron over towering trees and then knocked in the putt. It’s quite the birdie that takes in two greens, the wrong fairway and an impromptu chat with Guy Sebastian.

Silly, weird, crazy, funny old game. If Smith wasn’t laughing, he’d be crying. How does he look on Wednesday? You wouldn’t say terrible but he concedes his swing, normally as light-fingered as a spider spinning its web, has been out of whack.

“My bad habit in my swing, technically, to put it simply, is my arms get kind of disconnected from my body,” he said.

“My arms travel a little bit too far … get in behind me and get a little bit too long, a bit of chicken- wing stuff. It just wasn’t in sync and to be honest, it was a long way out last week. The arms just travelled too far. The work is just trying to get the arms and the body to match. There’s no reason why I can’t be competitive. I wouldn’t say my confidence is at 100 per cent, but it only takes a few good shots and a few good feels and suddenly you’re looking at yourself at the top of the leaderboard.”