They’ve slept under his Florida roof, travelled on his private jet and now Wes Hinton and Kayun Mudadana will share centre stage with Cameron Smith at this week’s Queensland PGA Championship at Nudgee Golf Club.
The first of four events that Smith will play on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia this summer, the Queensland PGA Championship has been elevated significantly by The Open champion’s presence.
No one will have a better view for the first two rounds, though, than Hinton and Mudadana, this year’s Cameron Smith Scholarship recipients.
As this year’s scholarship winners, Hinton and Mudadana spent a week with Smith in September, honing their games under his tutelage in Florida before watching the Queensland legend in action at LIV Golf Chicago.
The pair played three rounds with Smith while they were in the US and now get a taste of what it’s like to play inside the ropes with thousands of golf fans watching every shot they hit.
“Playing golf with Cam before this is really beneficial because we were both really nervous to play with him because Cam’s going to see every single shot we hit,” said Hinton, a Brisbanite who plays at Keperra Country Golf Club.
“If he hits a bad shot, he’s going to see it and you don’t want to hit bad shots in front of him. But now that that’s happened, you’re more used to it. It’s accepting that you will hit bad shots and you’ve just got to live with it.
“There’s going to be a lot more nerves. It’s going to be about trying to accept that, turn those nerves into excitement. It’s a privilege to be playing under that sort of pressure.”
Estimating that the biggest crowd he has played in front of is “maybe 20 people”, Mudadana is ready to embrace any pressure that accompanies such an illustrious grouping.
“I don’t really get too distracted by it, I just try to play my best,” said Mudadana, a member at New South Wales Golf Club in Sydney. “Just to show them how good I can be. I don’t really get too nervous by it.”
While they now get to see Smith go to work inside the ropes, both Hinton and Mudadana said their greatest takeaway from their time with the three-time Australian PGA champion was his intention during practice… and how he disconnects in his down time.
“When Cam is practising, he’s very engaged in his practise – more than anyone in the whole world I’ve heard,” said Hinton, who won the Cameron Smith Junior Classic at Wantima Country Club in 2022.
“When he’s practising, he’s fully involved in it and then he gets away from the game. But when he’s there, he’s training better than anyone.”
“Watching how he practises and uses his time and just what he does besides golf to distract him from golf,” Mudadana said of what he observed. “Not always just being 100 percent golf.
“It was pretty cool to watch what he does in an off week and practise even at the tournament. How he prepared for it was pretty cool.”
Both have tried to find that balance since returning to their home clubs while at the same time honing some of the short-game wizardry that Smith shared during their time together. They’re shots that might come in handy as they seek to turn two rounds with their idol into two further bonus rounds on the weekend.
“I thought maybe he might be pretty serious when he wants to practise and we’d have to do our own thing, but he really taught us and took us on board,” Mudadana said.
“He gives back a lot to Golf Australia’s junior golfers, which is really good. Not many other guys do that.”
“He was very active in helping us learn,” Hinton added. “When we went out to the chipping green, he would come out and check in, give us some tips.
“He helped mine and Kay’s technique a lot, how to hit certain shots, how to play out of the rough and stuff like that. Short game tips was definitely the most helpful.”
