Cameron Smith joins the breakaway LIV Golf Tour having won The 150th Open Championship at St Andrew's earlier this summer. The week's LIV event in Boston is set to include 12 major champions with 22 combined majors as well as four former world No 1 players
Wednesday 31 August 2022 11:38, UK
While PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan won't be losing too much sleep over the defections of Marc Leishman, Harold Varner III, Cameron Tringale and Anirban Lahiri, two of the new LIV Golf rebels are significant: Cameron Smith and Joaquin Niemann.
Smith's move is important for a number of reasons.
He's the current world No 2 and at the very height of his powers. Up until this point, LIV's acquisitions have largely been players approaching the end of their careers or whose games are on the wane.
He's the reigning champion of The Players, the PGA Tour's flagship event, and the 2023 championship will now have to proceed at TPC Sawgrass next March without its defending champion, a source of embarrassment for the Tour. One of the reasons he was such a popular winner back in March of this year is because he lives just around the corner from Sawgrass, and indeed PGA Tour headquarters.
He's also the only reigning major champion to have made the jump, although Monahan will be reassured that the other three - Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas and Matt Fitzpatrick - are all fiercely loyal to the PGA Tour and have been outspoken in public on this matter.
Smith also opens up the big Australian golfing market for LIV. Australia boasts some of the most outstanding courses in the world, but for years many Aussie golf fans have felt overlooked by the PGA Tour.
LIV Golf, however, are taking a tournament to Australia, and they'll do so with the country's finest player in tow. You can bet your bottom dollar that at this very moment, arrangements are busily being made for a photoshoot in Boston this week, with Greg Norman and Smith - Australia's two most recent Open champions - arm in arm and posing proudly whilst clutching the Claret Jug.
Niemann's defection is significant because, like Smith, he's young, currently playing the best golf of his life and has the world at his feet with so much he could potentially achieve in the game. He too opens up a huge market - the Latin American market.
It's my understanding that of all LIV's latest recruits, Niemann was the most conflicted. At one stage he'd looked nailed-on - he's part of the same management stable as Bryson DeChambeau, Paul Casey, Abraham Ancer, Louis Oosthuizen and Sergio Garcia who, in particular, is a huge mentor for the young Chilean.
I'm told that his fellow South American Camilo Villegas, however, then succeeded in talking Niemann out of the move, only for LIV to up their offer and eventually manage to prise him away.
Niemann was one of the 23 players in a hotel meeting room in Delaware as recently as two weeks ago, as Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy laid out their vision for the future of the PGA Tour. There was unanimous agreement and reportedly palpable excitement in the room afterwards at how bright the future looked.
It will be a blow to 22 of the men in that room that one of them has now performed an about-turn and is taking with him privileged information of the discussions that took place within those four walls.
While in the long term Smith and Niemann are unquestionably losses for the PGA Tour, in the immediate short term spare a thought for the captain of the International Team at next month's Presidents Cup, Trevor Immelman. His tenure has felt cursed. It's been eventful and stressful to say the least and whilst he's laughed a lot of it off on social media, I know for a fact his phone has barely stopped ringing in recent months as he deals with the latest fire that needs to be put out.
Even on the night Smith won The Open in such memorable fashion at St Andrews last month, I understand Immelman - along with one of his assistant captains Ernie Els - spent over an hour on the phone with the champion trying in vain to talk him out of a move to LIV.
Already up against it given the relative strength of the two sides and the fact this year's Cup takes place on US soil - in Quail Hollow, Charlotte in just three weeks' time - Immelman now has to make do without four of the nine highest-ranked internationals; Smith, Niemann, Ancer and Oosthuizen.
The other four players to have left for LIV - Leishman, Lahiri, Varner and Tringale - do not represent significant body blows for the PGA Tour although there is some irony to the fact that Tringale is the player with the most career earnings ($17,319,281) without a victory on Tour.
One of the axes Phil Mickelson had to grind with the PGA Tour was that the top players weren't financially looked after enough, while middle-ranking journeymen were rewarded above and beyond.
The prime example of that will now be plying his trade with LIV, where he will certainly be guaranteed to add to that sum without having to do too much.
And whilst the losses of Smith and Niemann will hurt the PGA Tour, they will breathe a sigh of relief that two others heavily rumoured to be considering the move - Hideki Matsuyama and Cameron Young - are staying put… for now.
LIV Golf see themselves as disruptors. And it is undeniable that snaring the Champion Golfer of the Year, the man who stood on the most famous green in golf and lifted the most iconic trophy in golf just last month, is a hugely symbolic coup and a real fly in the ointment for the 'establishment'.
Just as securing the services of Henrik Stenson and forcing Ryder Cup Europe into an unprecedented and humiliating stripping of the captaincy, widely considered the greatest honour that can be bestowed upon a European golfer, was a huge feather in their cap. Indeed, LIV Golf can now boast the winners of 12 of the last 26 major championships. That is extraordinary and cannot be dismissed lightly.
And yet, there is a feeling that this now may be as good as it gets for LIV Golf. With the PGA Tour having outlined a clear strategy moving forwards, with elevated events and the top players better rewarded financially, the gradual trickle of players may have been nipped in the bud.
The heaviest of storms may already have been weathered. Who, realistically, can LIV now tempt to jump ship? The 'golden geese' - McIlroy, Thomas, Jon Rahm, Jordan Spieth, Scheffler - are all committed to the PGA Tour.
And while these players, among others, will continue to play for tournaments with history, meaning and prestige - earning those hugely important world ranking points in the process - LIV golfers will watch their world rankings continue to nose-dive, the major appearances (for some) begin to dry up and, almost inevitably, the already paltry YouTube viewing figures drop further still.
Finally, it's worth noting Cam Smith's answer when asked just over a year ago what he might do with the $15m on offer to the winner of the FedEx Cup.
"I'm pretty set, to be honest. I'm good. I'm good with what I've got. I don't know what I'd do, to be honest. Maybe buy some more fishing equipment".
Twelve months on it would appear he wasn't "good with what he'd got", but instead desperate for more.
The Shark has managed to hook Smith, a hell of a catch and unquestionably the biggest fish in their small pond.
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