Smith’s hugs delight after fan saves the day

Well poised. Ready to pounce. Looming large over the field with an increasingly significant home ground advantage and a year’s worth of motivation driving the charge.

Any which way you put it Cameron Smith and his Aussie teammates used Super Saturday at The Grange to surge into contention for the LIV win they want the most as the pied piper embraced the growing masses following him, with the crowd up 30 per cent on day one, to deliver.

Smith even dished out a hug to helpful fan, Annett Blake, who sent his ball back on to the 17th fairway with a “member’s bounce”, after his errant drive struck her, turning it into one of seven birdies including on his final hole to be just three shots behind leader Brendan Steele in search of the victory he and his Ripper GC teammates have been “talking about all year”.

“I felt really bad for the old lady down there. I hit her in the back,” Smith said of his fan encounter, an authentic moment at a tournament which keeps him smiling with victory a real chance.

“It probably wasn’t going to be in the trees but it was going to be in the rough and a different lie, so it could have been a different outcome.

“But I made her proud and made a birdie there. Hopefully that eased the pain a little bit for her. I signed a ball, and she said, ‘just give me a hug’, so I gave her a hug, as well.”

Dual victories, with the all-Aussie Ripper GC team sitting in fourth after the best cumulative score of the day, will be the aggressive pursuit of the local lads who have released the shackles after a too-timid 2023 approach knowing their opponents have demanded low scores as a must.

But the extra burden of hope, while motivating, is also an expectation Smith concedes is hard to escape.

“I think having support like we have this week is different to what we have 51 other weekends out of the year. It’s a very different feeling,” Smith, who is bogey free through the opening two rounds, said.

“I think the support is amazing, but there’s also a lot of pressure put on you, as well, to perform.

“There’s a lot going through your mind every second of the day. It’s very tiring. Yeah, it’s kind of a good and a bad thing at the same time.

“I think not only us but probably every other Australian wants us to do well and wants us to win tomorrow. That’s a lot of weight on the shoulders as it is, but yeah, we’re ready for tomorrow.”

Scoring was astounding on Friday and even better on Saturday, with the field combining to shoot an extraordinary 185-under, 44 shots better then the opening day birdie blitz.

American Steele was a significant contributor with nine in his eight-under round of 64 the best of the day and helping give him a single shot lead over New Zealanders Danny Lee.

Smith also said the team’s leaderboard pretty much “reset to zero” with just two shots to make up and all four team member scores counting for the final round.

The Ripper team has won the team trophy just once in LIV’s short history.

LEADERBOARD

14-under - Brendan Steele

13-under - Danny Lee

12- under Carlos Ortiz, Mito Pereira

THE AUSSIES

11-under - Cameron Smith

10-under - Matt Jones

6-under - Marc Leishman, Lucas Herbert