Mr. Smith goes to the top

By Tim Cronin

Writing from Sugar Grove, Illinois

Saturday, September 17, 2022

If you are someone with a Claret Jug in your back pocket and the No. 3 world golf ranking in your wallet – along with the reported $125 million the LIV Golf group has shelled out for your services the next few years – you could probably take it easy on the golf course, not taking chances, not grinding, not worrying about anything but when the Dow Jones Industrial Average will rise again.

Cameron Smith is that someone, but he’s not thinking that way. Smith wants to earn his keep in the LIV Golf series, and Saturday at Rich Harvest Farms was an example of how he’s going about it.

How’s a windblown 4-under-par 68 for a 36-hole aggregate of 10-under 134 and a two-stroke lead sound? Smith accomplished that via five birdies against a solitary bogey and is two strokes ahead of Dustin Johnson with a round to play in the LIV Golf Invitational Chicago.

A large chunk of the gallery of 18,000 – a LIV series record, their group trumpeted – watched Smith, Johnson and Matthew Wolff traipse around Rich Harvest, and were rewarded at 4:49 p.m., when Smith dropped a seven-foot birdie putt on the devilish par-4 17th to move to 9-under and nudge Johnson out of the lead. Johnson’s 1-over 73 was his first over-par circuit in the larval LIV league, a mere five tournaments old, and 10 strokes over the course-record 63 he posted in the first round.

“We had a gusty, windy start,” Smith said. “Then it laid off a little bit and came up again at the end. It was quite tricky there guessing clubs. That’s when I made my bogey (on the 11th hole). If they leave the course be overnight I think it’ll be really fun tomorrow, firm and fast."

Smith’s effort was the second-best round of the day, trailing only Peter Uihlein, who paid no mind to a southwest breeze that gusted to 25 mph and was a steady 18 mph for hours. Uihlein fired a 6-under 66 to move into solo third at 7-under 137 and grab a spot in the final threesome with Smith and Johnson.

The shotgun start format – air horns, actually – had Uihlein opening on the fourth hole. He bogeyed the fifth, but a birdie on the par-4 eighth was critical in his view.

“That righted the ship,” Uihlein said. “After that, I played great. Steady, solid, hit some fairways, hit some greens, just took what the course gave me. I hit a bomb on 13 (one of his seven birdies), and kind of stole one there, but it was steady all the way.”

If anything, Smith was most impressed with the gallery. Friday’s first-round independent estimate of 8,000 was surpassed by 10 a.m., when 10,000 were already on hand. By 3 p.m., it was 18,000, according to a LIV staffer, and the only question was how everyone would fit onto the two-lane road after the round to get back to civilization.

“It’s a big walk out there, and the fans did it all day,” Smith said. “It was perfect.”

That shows Chicago’s golf fans, who last had a big-time tournament in town and open to the public three years ago, are starved for stars. The 2019 BMW Championship / Western Open at Medinah Country Club was a big hit. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2020 BMW at Olympia Fields was closed to the public unless you were watching through a fence on Vollmer Road.

Around Rich Harvest 

Greg Norman, the LIV commissioner whose original plan of a world golf circuit has come to reality almost 30 years later, was on hand Saturday, slapping players’ backs on the driving range and generally schmoozing his way around. He was absent on Friday, said to be in meetings elsewhere. For a TV deal, perhaps? … The YouTube audience was around 62,000 late in the round. The LIV telecasts in the U.S. are also on LIV’s website and DAZN, another online service. … Sunday’s start is 12:15 p.m., following a quartet of parachutists with the 18th fairway their target. Saturday, three of the four were on the mark. The fourth landed on the second fairway. … The 4 Aces, captained by Johnson, leads the Punch quartet, helmed by Smith, by a stroke. The top three teams split up $5 million of the combined $25 million purse, so even Marc Leishman, at even par individually, is playing for big bucks two ways in the final round.