Surrounding himself with friends and family on the Gold Coast has proven to be a winning formula for two-time defending Australian PGA champion Cameron Smith.
First, there is the mandatory shopping trip to the nearest Woolies or Coles. A stop-off at the bottle shop constitutes part of the car trip home and from there it’s fun and games for a week on the Gold Coast.
No, this isn’t a meticulously planned Schoolies trip but an environment that has contributed to Cameron Smith logging the only two individual professional titles of his career and placed him on the verge of history more than 100 years in the making.
Not since Dan Soutar claimed the first three Australian PGA Championships to be contested starting in 1905 has a player been victorious in three successive years, yet that is the 112-year-old feat now within Smith’s grasp. It will mark the completion of a three-week stretch incorporating the Australian Open and Presidents Cup at the end of a long year on the PGA Tour, yet the rented house filled with friends and family may yet again prove to be the tonic Smith needs to write his name into Australian golf history.
“As soon as he’s off the golf course, we try to make it as fun as possible,” explains long-time mate Jack Wilkosz, who works for Smith in the US in a role that shall now be defined as the ‘Minister for Positivity’.
“There’ll still be times when he has to participate in the weekly gym schedule and catch up on all the things he has to do, but as soon as it’s off course it’s about having fun. Last year we ran a spikeball tournament on the beachfront just outside the house, a handball-cross-volleyball team game. I think we played more spikeball than Cam played golf that week.
‘Last year we ran a spikeball tournament on the beachfront just outside the house, a handball-cross-volleyball team game. I think we played more spikeball than Cam played golf that week’ – Jack Wilkosz
“It’s just a good buzz around the house. It’s usually all smiles and a few drinks for the family and friends, but nothing to cause any harm to what Cam’s trying to achieve.”
Luke Humphries’ introduction to Smith was as members of the victorious Australian Trans-Tasman
Cup team that played at Royal Canberra in 2009, the skinny 15-year-old from Brisbane making an everlasting first impression.
“After knowing him for about 15 minutes, he did a nudie run straight through the hotel rooms,” Humphries recalls. “I thought, I’ve probably got no chance of not knowing this guy now.
“You could always tell from a young age that he had something pretty special. He has a very carefree attitude, which I think has a lot to do with what’s got him to where he is today.”
Perhaps it is the mix of that carefree attitude and motivation to perform on home soil that brings the best out in Smith when he arrives at RACV Royal Pines Resort each year.
“Being at home in front of his friends and family is a big motivator,” explains Smith’s long-time coach, Grant Field. “Being such a proud Queenslander and Australian, he wants to perform well. It’s something that is very important to him. He really prides himself on bringing his best stuff when he’s at home.
“While he’s not doing his normal amount of work and is a bit more relaxed about things that doesn’t mean that he’s taking it easy, that’s for sure. He does the work all year so he can have a week where he’s not working his bum off and he’s still going to be OK. We jokingly talk about the fact that it’s probably one of the only weeks when he will have a beer during the week and maybe he should do it more often but he knows, performance-wise, it’s probably not something that’s sustainable.”
‘We jokingly talk about the fact that it’s probably one of the only weeks when he will have a beer during the week and maybe he should do it more often but he knows, performance-wise, it’s probably not something that’s sustainable’ – Grant Field
The Smith support crew also takes their roles very seriously. Whether it’s Uncle Trev making his world-famous lambs fry and bacon for breakfast, Jason McDonald and his wife taking care of the nightly cooking duties or the early-morning alarms to be at the course when Cam tees off, it’s all designed to have their man in the right frame of mind to be able to contend on Sunday.
“He wants us there for support, so if he’s there we should be getting up at the same time as him,” Humphries says.
“I’ve had some 4 o’clock alarms to go out to the course with him, but that’s all part of being there. That’s just a little sacrifice we have to make. He is very close with his family and enjoys having them around and will do anything for them. Having them there not only relaxes him but spurs him on a little bit as well, to perform in front of all of his family and friends who are there to support him.”
A large contingent of friends of family often join Smith at Augusta National for the Masters each April and Smith has no doubt his victories at Royal Pines the past two years – as well as two top-10s – is in part due to what happens within ‘Camp Cam’.
“It’s probably more the stuff off the course that I love,” the 26-year-old told the PGA Golf Club podcast. “It’s only about 45 minutes away from where I grew up, so all my mates come down for the weekend and the family’s there the whole week. I basically get off the golf course, have a couple of beers and a few laughs and get to catch up with everyone. The relaxed mindset frees me up on the golf course and the golf course suits me as well.”
Cam the competitor
If you use Cameron Smith as an example to disprove the old adage that nice guys don’t finish first, you’ve obviously never seen him on his iRacing Simulator. You don’t get to Smith’s station in life without an inherent love of winning, and it manifests itself in numerous ways on and off the golf course.
“He’s competitive beyond measure,” Wilkosz says. “I wouldn’t say it’s annoying, but if we’re driving somewhere and I’m in my car and he’s in his and I’m meant to be showing him the way, he’ll sit in front. It doesn’t matter.
“He does not like getting beaten on his car simulator either, especially by me. He likes to take the mickey out of me about my driving, probably because I like to think I drive responsibly. We’ve had competitions where we race around Mount Panaroma all trying to do our best lap. You have to do a certain time every lap otherwise you get a penalty; if you get penalised two laps you get kicked out. I made it to 10 or 11 laps one time before I crashed out and when I turned around, he’s got the proper sparko gloves on and his boots for the simulator. You don’t need gloves but he treats it like it’s the real thing. It’s a game, but he’s committed to it 100 per cent. He doesn’t want to just beat you, he will show you how to drive Mount Panorama.”
A house guest for the week, Humphries once beat Smith in a quarter-final at the Keperra Bowl in Brisbane and wondered whether he would need to find new accommodation for the night.
“The next day he drove me back up to the course and caddied for me for the day,” Humphries recalls. “That’s just the guy that he is. He can definitely separate having the fun, but he knows what he wants out on the golf course and he takes it very seriously.
“The first Australian Amateur that he won, I was in the second-last group and he was in the last group. As we walked down the 18th fairway at Victoria, I asked him how he was going and he nonchalantly said he was one behind. He went birdie-birdie to get into a playoff and then birdied the first playoff hole to win.
“He knows when it’s time to hit that shot or in particular moments take it seriously. He may not show at times that it means a lot to him, but when you get to know him you understand just how serious he takes it when he has to.”
Field is also not immune from Smith’s competitive instincts. They will sharpen his world-renowned short game with nearest-the-pin competitions or chipping comps, but Field knows that his charge is grounded in a very healthy reality that allows him to separate golf from life.
“He’s definitely competitive, but he’s learned that it’s not life and death,” Field says. “He desperately wants to win but he’s also aware that when you put yourself out there, that often a lot of the times that’s not going to happen. We talked about it this year, that there are so many aspects to his life now on and off the course. That’s a big part of the next cycle, managing those things.
“He had the World Cup last year, Presidents Cup this year, more sponsors, more sponsor engagements, more media commitments, he’s got his house, the dog that travels with them a little bit. There are all these extra layers to performance that he’s got to learn to manage.
“It’s like winning the PGA twice; now there are more layers to his commitments than there was two years ago. As he keeps going, he’ll keep getting better at that.”
For Wilkosz, who knew Smith only as the kid who spent more time at golf than at Bray Park State School until the pair were placed in the same Year 10 roll call, Smith’s commitment to his friends and family is a more defining quality than how well he hits a golf ball.
“At the time I just knew him as a funny bloke and someone I liked to hang out with,” Wilkosz says. “I don’t think anything’s changed. He’s still the same guy that I would hang out with straight out of school. He’s got all the time in the world for friends and family, juniors – he’s never changed in that aspect. He’s always just been a top bloke and that’s probably his greatest quality, just how genuine he is all the time.”
