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Smith leads Aussie charge at St Andrews

Cameron Smith has made his best British Open start to sit third on the leaderboard but it was a different story for Tiger Woods who had a horror day to languish in equal 148th place.

Jul 15, 2022, updated Jul 15, 2022
Australia's Cameron Smith won his first LIV golf event in Chicago on the weekend. Photo: Richard Sellers/PA Wire.

Australia's Cameron Smith won his first LIV golf event in Chicago on the weekend. Photo: Richard Sellers/PA Wire.

Smith fired a stylish five-under-par 67 on Thursday to sit three strokes shy of American leader Cameron Young after the first round of the marquee 150th Open.

Open favourite Rory McIlroy, with a 66, is the only other player in front of Smith, who could become the first Australian triumph at St Andrews in more than 60 years.

Thirteen of the 14 champions at St Andrews since World War II have figured in the top 10 after round one, leaving Smith’s countrymen Brad Kennedy (68) and Min Woo Lee (69) also well positioned for a run at the cherished Claret Jug.

Smith, though, once again looms as Australia’s brightest hope of snapping the country’s 29-year Open title drought after mixing six birdies with just one bogey.

“It’s nice to get off to a hot start any week, really,” he said.

“But these majors, the tougher the course gets, especially around here, how it’s going to get really firm and really fast, it’s almost going to be like holding on, I think, on the weekend.

“So nice to get out there and shoot a number and get myself well under par.”

Smith has only once in four previous starts finished in the top 20 at the Open.

The 28-year-old reckons the key to his turnaround on the famous Scottish links is no longer over-complicating things.

“Maybe at the start of my professional career I was trying to play too much of the right shot rather than just sticking to kind of what I know,” Smith said.

“I feel like I’m hitting more similar shots to what I would in the US, whereas before I thought the need to try and hit it low because that’s what everyone said you had to do.

“And I think with the humps and hollows, it comes quite unpredictable, and just something that I’ve learned over the years.”

Five-times champion Peter Thomson in 1955 and Kel Nagle in 1960 are the only Australians to have won the Open at golf’s spiritual home.

Seventeen years after joining Jack Nicklaus as the only two-time Open winner around St Andrews in more than a century, an ailing and ageing Woods hobbled around the Old Course in six-over-par 78 in Thursday’s first round.

The 15-times major champion had only three birdies on a day when Australian battler Brad Kennedy and US first-round leader Cameron Young had eight each.

Compounding Woods’ woes – which began with a double bogey on the first after hitting his approach from a fairway divot into the Swilcan Burn – his dreadful round took a painstaking six hours and eight minutes to complete.

Adam Scott has ground to make up following an even-par 70, but fellow former Open runner-up Marc Leishman’s latest quest to claim the Claret Jug is all but over after a four-over 76.

 – AAP

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