After LIV Golf’s Cameron Smith coup, who next?

The Saudis’ capture of Cameron Smith punctures, once and for all, the narrative that LIV Golf is nothing more than a twilight zone for superannuated nearly men and has-beens. For the Australian, belying his image as a fishing-obsessed larrikin, happens to be the most in-form player on the planet.

At 28, he is the world No.2, fast closing in on Scottie Scheffler at the summit. He has just won an Open at St Andrews with arguably the finest back nine in major championship history. Smith broke the PGA Tour’s scoring record in January, finishing the season-opener in Hawaii on a frankly obscene 34 under par.

Cameron Smith is playing some of the best golf on the tour.Credit:AP

If LIV truly is “the circus,” as the PGA Tour’s Ryan Palmer alleged this week, then Smith is anything but the resident clown.

His signing is arguably the Saudis’ most significant coup, and could represent a tipping point – a moment where a gilded freak show turns into a sporting event that might demand the world’s attention.

It also makes you wonder which players could be next: Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama has long been linked, but what price other rising stars such as Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa and Scheffler? Suddenly, nothing is off the table – particularly with the sums being dangled in front of those being courted.

Should Smith sustain his dazzling streak, his $US100 million-plus signing-on fee (about $141 million) will be just the start. After all, the three LIV events to date have been won by Charl Schwartzel, Branden Grace and Henrik Stenson, all ranked outside the world’s top 100 and all struggling even to make a cut before the cheques from Riyadh landed.

You can see why the initial contact from Greg Norman, LIV’s ringmaster, became an offer Smith could not refuse. Stenson, a 46-year-old who has failed to reach the weekend in seven of his past nine majors, is the type of player he should be beating for breakfast. And yet the Swede, quickly forgetting his defenestration as Ryder Cup captain, earned more for a glorified three-day exhibition at Bedminster than Smith did for winning the 150th Open at the home of golf.

From Smith’s perspective, this is an imbalance that urgently needs correcting. If he takes home the maximum loot of £3.93 million ($5.77 million) on his LIV debut in Boston next month, he would eclipse even the £2.98 million he earned at the Players Championship in May, in what was then the richest prize ever offered by a single golf tournament. Why should the leading man tolerate making less than some forgotten members of the chorus line?

There is, of course, an argument that Smith has amassed quite enough cash already. He inhabits a glossy mansion in Jacksonville with a small fleet of supercars. His Australian friends insist he is not the materialistic type, that he derives no greater pleasure than from catching swordfish or mahi-mahi off the Florida coast. Against that logic, one struggles to picture how Smith will spend an even vaster fortune. Surely there are only so many fishing rods a man needs. The likelier explanation is that Smith is making the leap for his long-term financial security.

Where Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy can afford to laugh off nine-figure sums, he does not quite enjoy that luxury.

He might be master of all he surveys in 2022, but golf is such a capricious game, so strewn with broken souls who fell as fast as they rose, that there are few guarantees he will be performing to such a prodigious standard in five years’ time. By then, the prevailing wisdom in golf is that the PGA Tour will be forced to broker a deal with the LIV renegades, placating them with some approximation of a global circuit. And by then, Smith will have stockpiled a bounty that sets him up for life.

It looks, at face value, a sensible decision. And yet, in the world of LIV, any notion of economic sense has long since left the building. The Saudis are approaching this project with an almost demented kleptomania, investing far more than they can hope to recoup, given that they do not even have a broadcast deal yet.

The numbers are so absurd, the golf itself has been rendered a sideshow. When Stenson holed the decisive putt at Bedminster, for the grandest payday of his career, the moment was greeted by the faintest rustle of polite applause. Even the winner himself did not look unduly bothered. Here lies the sadness in Smith’s defection. With his talent in the fullest bloom, he deserves to be playing in front of the largest galleries, for the highest stakes. LIV, ultimately, offers him neither. It is a realm with all the money but none of the prestige. Smith, you sense, understands what true glory in golf means. As he gave his acceptance speech on the 18th green at St Andrews, the Claret Jug in his hand, the quaver in his voice suggested he was genuinely overwhelmed.

For Smith to be swapping such moments for hollow, show-me-the-money exercises is a cause for lament. At one level, his departure in his prime demonstrates the scale of the Saudis’ ambitions.

But at another, it is the grimmest possible reflection of the schism they have wrought.

The Telegraph, London

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