Cameron Smith is on the verge of doing the unthinkable:
Allowing his golf game to make him more recognizable than this hairstyle.
Smith’s record-setting performance in winning the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua’s defenseless Plantation Course would have been impressive enough based just on the numbers – his 34-under-par total is the lowest score to par in PGA Tour history – but the vein of gold running through it is how Smith did it going head-to-head with world No. 1 Jon Rahm on the weekend.
For a player whose only previous solo win on the PGA Tour came two years ago at the Sony Open in Hawaii, which conveniently enough for Smith begins Thursday in Honolulu, he never flinched as Rahm (and at the end, Matt Jones) threw all he had at him.
Now that he’s climbed to 10th in the world rankings, it’s not just about Smith’s runaway mullet hairstyle anymore but, in fairness, that will be part of his story until someone takes a pair of scissors to the locks that spills out the back of his cap like multiple tails on a kite.
The only wrinkle in Smith’s performance?
His goal was to shoot 35-under par. Audacious, yes, but he missed by one stroke.
“That’s just where my game is at the moment,” said Smith, who has won the Zurich Classic twice, teaming first with Jonas Blixt and more recently with Marc Leishman.
Smith led or shared the lead after all four rounds and while the Plantation Course was rain-softened and the trade winds fell off, he still took scoring where no one had previously on the PGA Tour. Too bad for Rahm (33 under) and Jones (32 under) who also broke the previous scoring record against par.
Take a moment and appreciate Smith’s scores: 65-64-64-65.
“It’s a weird feeling. A guy who did everything better than me by just a little bit,” said Rahm, who shot 127 on the weekend.
Smith has quietly built himself as a tenacious competitor. He’s never the first name on the list of pre-tournament favorites but he’s a tough player to shake. He’s an excellent putter, which has more than offset the fact he’s not the best driver on tour. At Kapalua, where the fairways are as wide as the horizon, Smith pulled it all together after taking an extended break.
He hung around his Florida home, did some fishing and hardly played golf for seven weeks. It didn’t seem to matter once he got to Hawaii a week before the Sentry event began.
“Over the break … more so than missing golf I think I just missed competing,” he said.
And no, Smith has no plans to give up the mullet just yet.
Ron Green Jr.