In the Tokyo Olympics of 2021, Cameron Smith finished just one shot away from an extra-hole shootout for third place.
This time around, the man widely regarded as Australia’s finest men’s golfer might not even qualify.
The top two Australians in the World Golf Rankings (WGR) as of June 17 will be selected to represent the nation in Paris – but LIV Golf events don’t count.
That means that Smith has just three majors to score WGR points and qualify for the Olympics.
Smith left the PGA Tour in 2022, just weeks after his famed victory at the 150th British Open at St Andrews saw him rise to world No. 2, having also won The Players in March that year.
Leishman also joined LIV in 2022, with the pair part of an all-Aussie Ripper GC team also featuring Lucas Herbert and Matt Jones.
Currently, Jason Day is Australia’s top-ranked player (22), ahead of Min Woo Lee (32), Adam Scott (52), Cam Davis (60), Cam Smith (62) and Lucas Herbert (82).
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Outside of a surprise last-minute invitation, six Australians will compete in next week’s Masters tournament, the first of the three majors in quick succession that Smith will be hoping earns his place on the plane to Paris.
The five top-ranked Aussies above – Day, Min Woo Lee, Scott, Davis, and Smith – will compete in Augusta, as will amateur Jasper Stubbs.
But by missing the Masters, it effectively means that Smith’s Tokyo 2020 teammate Marc Leishman (461st) is out of the running to back up his Olympics appearance, and the same case applies to fellow LIV competitors Herbert and Matt Jones.
Smith is in hot form, having won three individual titles in LIV and last month coming close to a record-breaking fourth when he fell in a playoff in Hong Kong to Fireballs GC’s Abraham Ancer – his second playoff defeat in LIV competition.
Speaking to Australian reporters today about his Paris Olympics dream, Smith said: “It’s desperately a place that I want to get to and represent Australia,” per The Guardian.
“I have to play well to get there, I know I have to play well, and I’m probably only going to get three or four shots at it before they make the selection,” he said. “I guess it is more pressure.”
Those three shots are the three majors, with next week’s Masters in Augusta followed by the PGA Championship in May and the US Open in June.
Smith has received an exemption to all four majors until at least 2028 thanks to his 2022 British Open victory, but this year’s edition of that tournament takes place a month after the June 17 Olympic qualification cut-off (July 18–21). The Paris games begin July 26.
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The only thing that could change the qualification process is if golf’s long-awaited PGA-LIV merger is finally sorted and LIV events awarded WGR points – something that LIV has repeatedly asked for, but been denied.
A merger was announced in June last year in a bid to end golf’s civil war, but the details are still being hashed out.
“The whole process is probably taken a little bit longer than everyone anticipated,” Smith said.
He added that there’s probably “a lot of spectators and fans that desperately want it to happen too”.
“So hopefully just through some determination they can get to a resolve pretty soon,” he said.
But in February, he said that it was unlikely that Olympics officials would change the rules in time for him to be selected if he isn’t one of Australia’s two highest ranked players.
“It’s a bit of a disadvantage compared to the other Aussie guys,” Smith told SEN in February.
“But I really want to be there. I’ll try and prepare as good as I can for those majors.”
He added that he did not expect rules officials to change the criteria to pick him
“They have already set criteria for that and I am not sure they are going to change it to suit me,” he said.
“We’ll see what happens, but I desperately want to be in Paris.”
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